Strategic information gathering before a contract is offered

In a Baron-Myerson setup, we study a situation where an agent is initially uninformed, but can, at a cost, acquire information about the state of nature before the principal offers him a contract. For intermediate values of the cost of acquiring information, the agent's equilibrium strategy will be a mixed strategy: He will acquire information with a probability strictly between 0 and 1. We identify the contract that the principal will offer to such a "maybe informed" agent. (C) 1998 Academic Press.