Task Assignmentand Agency Structures

This paper considers an agency model in which a principal delegates an agent authority to choose investment projects. The performance of the project depends stochastically on the agent's evaluation and operating efforts. The paper examines the conditions under which the principal prefers to assign production to a second agent. It is shown that the tasks will be assigned to two agents of the agent chooses an unobservable operating effort. The tasks will be assigned to one agent if the agent's evaluation and operating efforts are both unobservable and if disutilities of efforts are large relative to the profit from the risky project.     

Survival and the art of profit maximization

We study the relationship between rationality and economic survival in a simple dynamic model, where agents from different populations interact repeatedly through random matching. An explicit criterion (“bankruptcy”) determines whether agents survive each interaction; all agents are presumed to be aware of this criterion. Survival in each interaction depends on two factors: the strategies agents adopt when they interact, and the wealth levels they bring to the game. The model is completely symmetric with the only difference between the agents of different populations being their objectives. We consider the case where there are two populations of agents in which all agents from one group have as their objective, maximizing the expected profits from each interaction, while all agents from the other attempt simply to maximize the probability of surviving (i.e., not going bankrupt in) the interaction. We show that under the equilibrium dynamics, the proportions of each group in the total population must be bounded away from zero, but the balance is in favor of the survival-probability maximizers in that their numbers as a fraction of total population must always exceed 1/2, and can be arbitrarily close to unity. On the other hand, the fraction of total wealth controlled by the expected profit maximizers must also be at least 1/2, and can asymptotically tend to unity.     

Safety margins versus profit maximization

Under uncertainty, firms risk bankruptcy. We ask, in symmetric duopoly with stochastic demand, what happens when one firm minimizes the probability of negative profits while the other maximizes expected profits. When fixed costs are small, a firm can reduce the likelihood of negative profits. However, under a large fixed cost, the chance of negative profits increases upon deviation from a profit‐maximizing strategy. In any event, if one firm adopts a safety‐first strategy, the other firm has higher profits and a better survival chance by maximizing expected profit. Finally, we compare a profit maximizing to a safety‐first strategy in relation to ownership and control in firms.     

Profit sharing with a contest among agents

We consider how an internal competition in the form of a contest among agents can be combined with profit sharing in team production. The principal can choose to share between the principal and the agents as well as the sharing rule with a competitive contest among the agents. We show that under some conditions, a pure strategy equilibrium of profit sharing exists. In equilibrium, internal sharing involves a contest that is more competitive than proportional sharing, and the principal can get higher profit compared to proportional sharing.     

Relative performance as a strategic commitment mechanism

Can managers' personality traits be of use to profit maximizing firm owners? We investigate the case where managers have a variety of attitudes toward relative performance that are indexed by their type. We consider two stage games where profit maximizing owners select managers in the first stage, and these managers, knowing each other's types, compete in a duopoly game in the second stage. The equilibria of various types of competition are derived and comparisons are made to the standard case where managers are profit maximizers. We show that managers' types can be used as a strategic commitment device that can increase firm profits in certain environments. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A model of vertical integration and investment in generation capacity in electricity markets: The case of the bidding game

The aim of this work is to assess the impact of (partial) vertical integration between generators and retailers on generation capacity choice and its subsequent welfare consequences. We present a framework in which final demand is perfectly inelastic and stochastic. Nevertheless, wholesale demand is elastic because of the existence of outside opportunities (mainly international transmission capacity). The model is a three-stage game. Neither transmission nor retail costs are taken into account.

In the first stage of the game, generators choose capacity only knowing distribution of demand and thus maximizing their expected profit. The second stage of the game represents the competition for market share between retailers in a market where consumers have switching costs. The former face unknown demand and maximize their utility based on two factors: the expected profit and a risk element. Finally, generators submit bid functions to the system operator given known demand and maximizing their profit during the last stage of the game. Retailers and generators interact in the wholesale market, which is cleared by the system operator whose function is to match supply (represented by the bids of the generators) and demand through a system of single price auctions. The wholesale market is the only means to buy and sell energy; there are no bilateral contracts between firms, except if they are vertically integrated.

We compare fully disintegrated and partially vertically integrated structures using a comparative statics approach. In this paper, the analysis will focus on the last stage of the game: the bidding game. We find that partial vertical integration between generators and retailers tends to lower wholesale prices but not unambiguously. Depending on which firm (vertically integrated or disintegrated generator) has installed the higher capacity and depending on level of demand, prices can stay unchanged or even rise.     

Accountability in an agency model: Project selection,effort incentives,and contract design*

We analyze an agency model of project choice and implementation where the agent is held accountable for his performance. We show that implementation of the ex ante efficient project may be impossible, irrespective of how the principal sets fixed wage and bonus rate. If it is possible, the principal may be forced to increase the bonus rate above the optimal project‐specific rate. The higher profit share compensates the agent for pressure he faces when he has to justify/explain his performance.     

Revenue and efficiency ranking in large multi-unit and bundle auctions

Should a seller use a multi-unit auction for identical and indivisible units of a good? We show, under specific assumptions on the value distributions of the bidders, that in large markets the multi-unit format generates higher (lower) expected revenue compared to the bundled format when the supply is relatively scarce (abundant). In contrast, a large market is shown to be always more efficient under the multi-unit format than its bundled counterpart. Thus under these assumptions a profit maximizing seller is expected to choose the relatively efficient multi-unit format when supply is scarce.     

Equilibrium in a market with intermediation is Walrasian

We show that a profit maximizing monopolistic intermediary may behave approximately like a Walrasian auctioneer by setting bid and ask prices nearly equal to Walrasian equilibrium prices. In our model agents choose to trade either through the intermediary or privately. Buyers (sellers) trading through the intermediary potentially trade immediately at the ask (bid) price, but sacrifice the spread as gains. A buyer or seller who trades privately shares all the gains to trade with this trading partner, but risks costly delay in finding a partner. We show that as the cost of delay vanishes, the equilibrium bid and ask prices converge to the Walrasian equilibrium prices. Received: 2 February 1996 / Accepted: 28 March 1997     

Team Incentives and Reference‐Dependent Preferences

We investigate a multi‐agent moral‐hazard model where agents have expectation‐based reference‐dependent preferences à la K?szegi and Rabin (2006, 2007). We show that even when each agent's probability of success in a project is independent, a principal may employ team incentives. Because the agents are loss averse, they have first‐order risk aversion to wage uncertainty. This causes the agents to work harder when their own failure is stochastically compensated through other agents' performance. In the optimal contract, agents with high performance are always rewarded, whereas agents with low performance are rewarded if and only if other agents' performance is high.     

Agency and Anxiety

In this paper, we introduce the psychological concept of anxiety into agency theory. An important benchmark in the anxiety literature is the inverted-U hypothesis, which states that an increase in anxiety improves performance when anxiety is low, but reduces it when anxiety is high. We show that the inverted-U hypothesis is consistent with evidence that high-powered incentives can reduce the agent's optimal effort and expected performance. In equilibrium, however, a profit-maximizing principal never offers such counterproductive incentives. We also show that the inverted-U hypothesis can explain empirical anomalies related to monitoring, the informativeness principle, and the risk–reward tradeoff.     

Bargaining over an uncertain outcome:¶the role of beliefs

We study the Nash bargaining solution of a problem in which two agents bargain over an uncertain outcome. Under the assumptions of risk neutrality and of constant absolute risk aversion, we study the way that the solution varies, ex ante, when we vary the beliefs of one agent. Changing an agent's beliefs in a way that makes them “more distant” from the other agent's beliefs makes the second agent better off. Received: 10 May 2001 / Accepted: 22 August 2001     

Optimal Licensing Contracts and the Value of a Patent

We extend Kamien and Tauman's (1986) analysis of the value of a patent. We find that an inventor can always design a fixed fee plus royalty contract such that his revenue is equal to the profit a monopoly endowed with the innovation could make on the market. This implies that the social value of a patent can be strictly negative whenever the patented innovation is of bad quality. We also explain why a principal can have an interest in using performance-based contracts although the principal and the agents are risk-neutral, information is symmetric, and agents' actions are verifiable.     

The directional profit efficiency measure: on why profit inefficiency is either technical or allocative

The directional distance function encompasses Shephard’s input and output distance functions and also allows nonradial projections of the assessed firm onto the frontier of the technology in a preassigned direction. However, the criteria underlying the choice of its associated directional vector are numerous. When market prices are observed and firms have a profit maximizing behavior, it seems natural to choose as the directional vector that projecting inefficient firms towards profit maximizing benchmarks. Based on that choice of directional vector, we introduce the directional profit efficiency measure and show that, in this general setting, profit inefficiency can be categorized as either technical, for firms situated within the interior of the technology, or allocative, for firms lying on the frontier. We implement and illustrate the analytical model by way of Data Envelopment Analysis techniques, and introduce the necessary optimization programs for profit inefficiency measurement.     

How should a principal reward and support agents when firm performance is characterized by success or failure?

Principal‐agent models with multiple agents typically assume that the principal wishes to maximize the sum of the agents' achievements (net of the rewards paid to them). But in many settings, like R&D, all that the principal “needs” is that at least one agent will be “successful.” We identify settings where the principal actually wants agents to refrain from exerting high effort in order to save expected compensation. We show that the number of agents can decrease in the project's value for the principal. We also consider sequential efforts and investigate settings where the principal can provide support to agents.     

经理层声誉与薪酬关系研究——来自上市公司的经验证据

代理人声誉与薪酬共同构成了委托人对代理人的激励机制,经理层的声誉作为其一项重要的个人特征,对其薪酬有怎样的影响?以目前国内外实证研究中常用的媒体曝光率作为经理层声誉的代理变量,分别从现金薪酬和股权薪酬两方面研究经理层的声誉与薪酬的关系。实证结果发现,在控制了企业规模、绩效、行业、地域、经理层年龄、管理层持股比例、董事会规模等因素的影响后,经理层的声誉与其薪酬显著正相关,也即经理层的声誉越好,其薪酬越高。     

Asset pricing with endogenous aspirations

We develop the classical asset pricing analysis assuming that the representative agent is characterized by endogenous aspirations. The agent's aspirations at time t are given by a linear combination of the standard of living (habit) at time t (the "forward" part) and of the conditional expectation at t of the habit at the end of the agent's life (the "backward" part). With this process we capture the fact that the agent's preferences are affected by what he plans to do in the future. Under certain conditions, the risk premium turns out to be higher than that obtained with an additive expected utility when both the forward and the backward parts affect the utility negatively.     

Production theory,uncertain prices and investment portfolios

This paper examines the allocative decisions of a competitive firm where input and output prices are uncertain and where the capital asset pricing model prevails. The firm behaves much as a profit maximizer under certainty, except that certainty equivalent prices formally replace the known prices. These certainty equivalent prices are composed of the expected price, the covariance of the price with the market (a measure of systematic risk) and a measure of risk aversion in the economy. Both static and comparative static propositions emerge in a natural way as extensions of standard, competitive and profit maximizing behavior. In addition, the model contains both the certainty case and the risk-neutral case as limiting examples.     

Price uncertainty and the effect of capital costs in a point in-point out inventory investment

This paper analyzes a point in-point out inventory investment under price uncertainty. The optimal quantity is determined by maximizing the expected value of the investor's risk preference function, which is a function of profit. Using an exponential risk preference function, the adjustment in the optimal quantity stemming from a change in the interest rate is investigated. The main conclusion is that the sign of the adjustment depends both on how profit is expressed and on the type of price distribution applied. Contrary to what is assumed in conventional managerial control practices, a rise in the interest rate might lead to an increase in the optimal quantity when present value serves as a measure of profit.     

The Ignored Performance Measure

This paper studies a setting in which a risk-averse agent must be motivated to work on two tasks: evaluating a potential project and, if the project is adopted, implementing it. Although a performance measure that is informative of an agent's action is typically valuable because it can be used to improve the risk sharing of the contract, this is not necessarily the case in this two-task setting. I provide a sufficient condition under which a performance measure that is informative of the agent's implementation effort is worthless for contracting despite the agent being risk averse. This shows that information content is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for a performance measure to be valuable.