Hidden information,bargaining power,and efficiency: an experiment

We devise an experiment to explore the effect of different degrees of bargaining power on the design and the selection of contracts in a hidden-information context. In our benchmark case, each principal is matched with one agent of unknown type. In our second treatment, a principal can select one of three agents, while in a third treatment an agent may choose between the contract menus offered by two principals. We first show theoretically how different ratios of principals and agents affect outcomes and efficiency. Informational asymmetries generate inefficiency. In an environment where principals compete against each other to hire agents, these inefficiencies may disappear, but they are insensitive to the number of principals. In contrast, when agents compete to be hired, efficiency improves dramatically, and it increases in the relative number of agents because competition reduces the agents’ informational monopoly power. However, this environment also generates a high inequality level and is characterized by multiple equilibria. In general, there is a fairly high degree of correspondence between the theoretical predictions and the contract menus actually chosen in each treatment. There is, however, a tendency to choose more ‘generous’ (and more efficient) contract menus over time. We find that competition leads to a substantially higher probability of trade, and that, overall, competition between agents generates the most efficient outcomes.     

Bargaining Through Agents: An Experimental Study of Delegation and Commitment

While face-to-face bargaining has proven itself to be extremely efficient in the laboratory, it appears to break down often in the real world. This discrepancy, we assert, is explained by the fact that in the real world face-to-face bargaining is usually conducted not between principals but between the agents of principals. We find a substantial increase in inefficiency when bargaining is conducted through agents rather than through principals and offer an explanation for this rise in inefficiency. As such, this paper helps to shed light on the growing literature on delegation, commitment, and preference distortion games. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C78, C92.     

Delegation and Threat in Bargaining

Two principals (“nations”) appoint one agent each to bargain over the provision of a public good. Two institutional set-ups are studied, each with a different level of authority given to the agents. Here authority means the right to decide the own side's provision if negotiations break down. In equilibrium the principals choose agents with preferences differing from their own. The low-authority equilibrium Pareto dominates (with regard to the principals) the case of the principals deciding on the provisions simultaneously (autarchy). The high-authority equilibrium is Pareto dominated by the low-authority equilibrium and it may even be dominated by autarchy.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Numbers: C71, and C72.     

Information sharing between vertical hierarchies

When do principals independently choose to share the information obtained from their privately informed agents? Information sharing affects contracting within competing organizations and induces agentsʼ strategies to be correlated through the distortions imposed by principals to obtain information. We show that the incentives to share information depend on the nature of upstream externalities between principals and the correlation of agentsʼ information. With small externalities, principals share information when externalities and correlation have opposite signs, and do not share information when externalities and correlation have the same sign. In this second case, principals face a prisonersʼ dilemma since they obtain higher profits by sharing information.     

Subjective Performance Evaluations and Reciprocity in Principal–Agent Relations

We conduct a laboratory experiment with agents working on, and principals benefiting from, a real effort task in which the agents' performance can only be evaluated subjectively. Principals give subjective performance feedback to agents, and agents have an opportunity to sanction principals. In contrast to existing models of reciprocity, we find that agents tend to sanction whenever the feedback of principals is below their subjective self‐evaluations even if agents' pay‐offs are independent of it. In turn, principals provide more positive feedback (relative to their actual performance assessment of the agent) if this does not affect their pay‐off.     

Cooperative Outcomes through Noncooperative Games

This paper shows the equivalence between the stable solution set of any cooperative game in characteristic form (G1) and the subgame perfect Nash equilibria in pure strategies of a certain noncooperative game (G2). Players of G1 are named "agents." G2 is played by different players ("principals") who compete in wages to attract agents. The equivalence result holds when there are enough principals (if the game is superadditive, two principals suffice). Finally, another related cooperative game (G3) is constructed with both principals and agents as players. For G2 and G3 the same result is then proven, for any number of principals. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C71 and C72.     

政府投资项目双层多级委托代理链的分析

本文分析了政府投资项目双层多级委托代理链和两个层次中的代理人问题.第一层委托代理关系是从公众到政府代理,主要的代理问题是对公共权力的约束.第二层委托代理关系是从政府代理人到项目业主和项目执行团队,主要代理问题是政府代理人如何约束其项目业主.在第二层委托代理关系中我国政府投资项目管理方式改革发展方向是以业主市场代理模式取代业主行政代理模式.代建制的推行就是为了适应这种发展趋势的改革举措.     

Negotiation and take it or leave it in common agency

This paper contrasts models of common agency in which principals compete in incentive contracts (that is, they make take it or leave it offers) with models where principals offer agents menus of incentive contracts from which the final contract is negotiated. It is shown that pure strategy equilibria in incentive contracts are robust to the possibility that principals might offer menus. In addition, a no-externalities condition is given such that any pure strategy equilibrium allocation with menus can be supported with competition in incentive contracts. The no-externalities condition is restrictive, but it is shown that it applies in most well-known common agency problems, including, for example, the Bertrand pricing problem.     

Monitoring and Motivation in Principal-Agent Relationships: Some Issues in the Case of Local Authority Services

This paper examines a number of issues concerning the effects of monitoring on principals and agents involved in the provision of local authority services subject to competition. It examines, and then extends, existing theoretical work indicating the potential for sub-optimal outcomes which result from the principal introducing monitoring schemes which focus upon the measurable aspects of the agent's performance. The paper then departs from the received principal-agent paradigm in order to consider whether monitoring and competitive regimes more generally have negative effects on the welfare and performance of principals and agents in both theory and practice.     

Labor flexibility and firm performance

The aim of this paper is to add to the labor flexibility debate by exploring the relationship between different forms of flexible working practices and the performance of the firm. Although there is a strong argument that labor flexibility can lead to greater financial success through the reduction in labor costs and the ability to use labor resources more efficiently, little empirical evidence has been provided to demonstrate the existence of such a relationship. This paper reviews the existing literature, puts forward a number of research propositions, and tests them by using data drawn from the Cranet-E International Survey of Strategic Human Resource Management. Only one form of numerical flexibility is found to have a positive relationship with firm performance. Proposals for further research are suggested.     

LABOR INCOME INDICES DESIGNED FOR USE IN CONTRACTS PROMOTING INCOME RISK MANAGEMENT

We propose that labor income indices be used to define settlements in many contracts, such as labor contracts, indexed bonds, or income securities. We discuss the issues in producing labor income indices for such uses, and develop prototype indices using US. data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). People are grouped by a clustering algorithm based on an estimated transition matrix between jobs, by education level, and by skill category. The groupings are defined so that few people move between them. For each grouping we generate a labor income index (1968–87) using a hedonic repeated-measures regression method. The indices show substantial variability through time, confirming the potential importance of the use of such indices in contracts. There is also substantial variability across groupings, as for example between the agriculture/labor grouping and other groupings, confirming the importance of using the grouping indices rather than aggregate indices in contracts.     

The labor market effects of introducing unemployment benefits in an economy with high informality

Unemployment benefit systems are nonexistent in many developing economies. Introducing such systems poses many challenges which are partly due to the high level of informality in the labor markets of these economies. This paper studies the consequences on the labor market of implementing an unemployment benefit system in economies with large informal sectors and high flows of workers between formality and informality. We build a search and matching model with endogenous destruction, on-the-job search, and intersectoral flows, where agents in the economy decide optimally whether or not to formalize jobs. We calibrate the model for Mexico, and show that the introduction of an unemployment benefit system, where workers contribute when employed in the formal market and collect benefits when they lose their jobs, even if they obtain informal jobs, can lead to an increase in formality in the economy, while also producing small increases in unemployment. The exact impact of incorporating such benefits depends on the relative strength of two opposing effects: the generosity of the benefits and the level of the contributions that finance those benefits. We also show important policy complementarities with other interventions in the labor market. In particular, combining the unemployment benefit program with policies that reduce the cost of formality, such as lower employment taxes and firing costs, can produce greater decreases in informality and lower impacts on unemployment than when the program is applied in isolation.     

Monitoring a common agent: Implications for financial contracting

Multiple principals want to obtain income from a privately informed agent and design their contracts non-cooperatively. The degree of coordination between principals shapes the contracts and affects the amount of monitoring. Equity-like contracts and excessive monitoring emerge when principals coordinate or verify each other's monitoring efforts. When this is not possible, free riding weakens monitoring incentives, so that flat payments, debt-like contracts, and very low levels of monitoring appear. Free riding may be so strong to induce even less monitoring than if the principals cooperated with each other; that is, non-cooperative monitoring does not necessarily lead to excessive monitoring.     

我国三峡库区移民家庭收入的微观影响因素

利用重庆市云阳县移民的调查数据,按移民类型和受教育程度对移民家庭收入进行统计分析。然后,按移民类型、受教育程度、年龄段进行分组,对影响移民家庭收入的微观因素进行回归估计。结果显示:移民家庭的经营土地对其家庭收入的贡献不大;劳动力对家庭收入的贡献最大;从年龄结构的角度看,31～45岁、46～60岁年龄段的劳动力对家庭收入的贡献最大;当劳动力的人均受教育年限达到大专水平时,家庭收入会随着劳动力文化水平的提高而增加;16～30岁年龄组中大专文化劳动力比例对家庭收入的贡献显著为正;31～45岁、46～60岁年龄组中初中文化劳动力比例对家庭收入的贡献显著为负;劳动力的非农业收入明显高于农业收入。最后提出:应鼓励移民从事非农业;鼓励青年和中年劳动力向工业和服务业发达的城市自愿流动;鼓励移民子女接受大专及以上教育;尽快健全城镇和农村移民的养老保险制度和最低生活保障制度。     

Agency in a market setting

This paper examines a market in which a continuum of principals and agents interact in a game. Principals offer contracts while agents decide on sets of acceptable contracts. A mechanism from a class satisfying efficiency, unbiasedness, and continuity properties then matches principals and agents. With risk neutral agents, when the contribution of principals and agents to the total gains from trade in a pairing are additively separable, the equilibria of the game coincide with the competitive equilibria for the market. In particular, all contracts used in Nash equilibrium induce first-best effort levels. Both principals and agents have exogenous opportunities outside this market. In equilibrium, agents have endogenously determined outside opportunities available from employment by another principal, and this may be the binding participation constraint in a principal-agent pairing. The results are extended to special non-separable cases and to the case of identical risk averse agents.We are grateful to seminar participants at Indiana University, the University of Kentucky, and Vanderbilt University for comments on earlier versions of this work. Referees' comments led us to generalize the model and to more clearly specify the point of the paper.     

Returns to skills,incentives to study and optimal educational standards

In imperfectly competitive labor markets returns to skills are lower than their productivity and educational standards may play an important role in stimulating students to provide efforts. We propose a principal-agent model to analyze the determinants of student effort and the setting of standards by a policy-maker maximizing alternative social welfare functions. We show that if the policy-maker takes into account individuals' future earnings, he finds it optimal to set lower standards in more distorted labor markets, whereas higher standards would be preferable for efficiency reasons. Moreover, we show that labor market distortions may also influence the amount of resources devoted to schools. Finally, it is shown that standard setting may be useful in preventing the opportunism of school principals in the use of resources.      

Imperfectly competitive factor markets and price normalization

A two-sector general equilibrium model with imperfectly competitive labor markets is set up. Noncooperative equilibria with wage setting at the sectoral level are shown to depend on the choice of price-normalization rule even though all agents behave fully rationally. Hence, imposing rationality is not sufficient to deprive the choice of price-normalization rule of its importance. It is argued that the importance of the choice of price-normalization rule may follow from the strategic interaction of agents and not from imperfectness of competition per se, and some examples are provided.     

Heterogeneity in Ability and Inheritance,Disparities, and Development

This paper investigates the impact of income inequality on economic growth. A two-period overlapping generations model is developed where agents are heterogeneous in innate abilities and inheritance. In the first period, they receive their inheritance and their abilities are revealed. There are only two types of abilities: high and low. Individuals decide on their education level, and divide their inheritance between spending on education and saving. In the second period, individuals supply their labor and allocate the labor income and the return to their saving between consumption and bequests to their offsprings. Initial capital stock is owned entirely by the capitalists. In this context, a more equal distribution of income enhances economic growth if the economy is lower than a threshold capital-labor ratio, while income inequality has an insignificant effect above this threshold. The predictions of the model are tested empirically using the Hansen (1999) threshold estimation. The results, using a panel of 70 countries for the period 1971-1999, suggest that there is a statistically significant threshold income per capita, below which the coefficient on the relationship between inequality and economic growth is significantly negative and above which the estimate is not significant.     

The British labor market in disequilibrium: Did the dole reduce employment in interwar Britain?

In this paper we estimate an econometric model of the labor market in interwar Britain. We reject the hypothesis that wages adjust sufficiently speedily to clear the labor market in each year in favor of a disequilibrium model in which the level of employment is determined by the lesser of labor demand or supply. We find that the level of unemployment benefits is a key determinant of labor supply. We estimate that a reduction in benefits to approximately half the 1925-38 average would have resulted in an increase in employment of between eight and twelve percent.     

Foreign informational lobbying can enhance tourism: Evidence from the Caribbean

There exist legal channels for informational lobbying of US policymakers by foreign principals. Foreign governments and private sector principals frequently and intensively use this institutional channel to lobby on trade and tourism issues. This paper empirically studies whether such lobbying effectively achieves its goal of trade promotion in the context of Caribbean tourism, and suggests the potential for using foreign lobbying as a vehicle for development. Panel data are used to explore and quantify the association between foreign lobbying by Caribbean principals and US tourist arrivals to Caribbean destinations. A variety of sensitivity analyses support the finding of a strong association. The policy implications are obvious and potentially important for developing countries.