Bargaining over incentive contracts

The incentive contract theory assumes that the principal holds all of the bargaining power. By introducing alternating offers and strategic delay into the nonlinear pricing model, we relax this assumption and analyze an infinite-horizon contract bargaining game. We attain either the “sequential separating equilibrium” or the “simultaneous separating equilibrium”, depending on the parameter values. We prove the existence and the uniqueness of the equilibrium, and claim that multidimensionality and strategic delay can help resolve the multiple equilibria problem of bargaining theory. When the time between offers approaches zero, either quantity distortion or delay persists.     

Implementation of multi-agent incentive contracts with the principal's renegotiation offer

The purpose of this paper is to explore a mechanism for supporting desired equilibrium actions in a one-principal, multi-agent model when the principal makes a renegotiation offer. We show that there exists a mechanism in which the principal's most preferred mixed strategy is always supported. Received: 30 May 1997 / Accepted: 10 October 1998     

Transfer prices and incentive contracts in vertically-integrated divisionalized companies

This paper studies a divisionalized firm with sequential transfers in which central management wants to motivate two division managers who receive predecision information. Central management can only contract on the observables price, cost and quantity. Starting with the optimal compensation schemes as a benchmark, the paper considers the question whether using transfer prices to substitute for price and cost, respectively, can replicate the optimal solution or not. This is to say, whether using an aggregate measure comes at a loss. The results are dependent on the design constraints (i) single or ‘dual’ transfer prices and (ii) simultaneous design of the reward functions or exogenously given reward functions. Basically, only in the case that central management is restricted to given reward functions, and wants to use the same single transfer price for both divisions, there is a loss relative to the benchmark solution. In the other cases, generally, there is enough latitude to design the available functions to mimic the benchmark. The paper goes on to discuss special cases. First, it finds conditions when purely cost-based transfer prices are optimal, and second, it derives explicit solutions for given linear compensation schemes over divisional book profits.     

Chapter 11 bankruptcy and the termination of collective bargaining contracts

In 1984 the Supreme Court ruled that employers can unilaterally break an existing collective bargaining contract upon filing a chapter 11 bankruptcy petition. This ruling changed both the contractual responsibilities of the employer to honor the collective bargaining agreement and the rights that workers have under the National Labor Relations Act. The purpose of this article is to show the conditions under which a Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceeding will lead to the termination of a labor contract. Our results suggest that (a) legal rulings that reduce the costs of bankruptcy will increase the number of contractual dissolutions and (b) a Chapter 11 bankruptcy is more likely to occur when a firm operates in a climate of uncertain expectations.     

Performance compensation contracts and CEOs’ incentive to shift risk to debtholders: An empirical analysis

The paper investigates the relationships among CEO incentive contracts, manager ownership, charter value, and bank risk taking. We analyze whether the presence and magnitude of incentive contracts induce CEOs of financially distressed firms and firms with high manager ownership to take unprofitable risks that shift wealth from debtholders to equity holders. Our sample focuses on banks that had both the incentive and opportunity to shift risks, and compares them with those that did not. We compare weak and strong banks in periods when the banks’ principal creditor, the FDIC, was a lenient and then a stringent monitor. The evidence is consistent with bonus compensation inducing CEOs of financially weak firms to shift risk to debtholders only if they do not have large insider ownership. The evidence is also consistent with these contracts rewarding CEOs for their effort to manage unforeseeable risk albeit not their ability. Low charter value banks with high managerial ownership took profitable risk during the lenient regulatory period.     

Spanning with futures contracts

Regression-based testing techniques have long been used to quantify whether the efficient frontier of a set of assets spans the frontier of a larger collection of investments. This paper derives regression-based spanning tests for the case in which the investment possibilities set contains, or is constituted by, futures contracts for which marked-to-market margins are explicitly taken into account. Two empirical applications illustrate our results.     

Stable many-to-many matchings with contracts

We consider several notions of setwise stability for many-to-many matching markets with contracts and provide an analysis of the relations between the resulting sets of stable allocations for general, substitutable, and strongly substitutable preferences. Apart from obtaining “set inclusion results” on all three domains, we introduce weak setwise stability as a new stability concept and prove that for substitutable preferences the set of pairwise stable matchings is nonempty and coincides with the set of weakly setwise stable matchings. For strongly substitutable preferences the set of pairwise stable matchings coincides with the set of setwise stable matchings.     

Equivalence theorem in matching with contracts

Review of Economic Design - This study considers the doctor-optimal stable mechanism in a matching-with-contract model (a doctor-hospital match, for instance). We show that, whenever the...     

Bilateral contracts

A mathematical characterization of self-enforcing bilateral contracts is given. Contracts where both parties exercise some control over the quantity traded can sometimes be superior to contracts that rest control entirely with one side. Some qualitative characteristics of these contracts are given.     

Bayesian incentive compatible beliefs

The problem of incentives for correct revelation is studied as a game with incomplete information where players have individual beliefs concerning other's types. General conditions on the beliefs are given which are shown to be sufficient for the existence of a Pareto-efficient mechanism for which truth-telling is a Bayesian equilibrium.     

Multiprincipals multiagents incentive design

This paper studies a simple setting in which the contractual arrangements which determine the incentives for agents are not designed by a single central planner, but are themselves the outcome of a game among multiple noncooperatively acting principals. The notion of an Epsilon Contracting Equilibrium is introduced to predict the outcome of the contract-design game among principals. Symmetric pure strategy Epsilon Contracting Equlibria may not exist in perfectly symmetric environments. In a symmetric Epsilon Contracting Equilibrium in mixed strategies coordination failure may lead to a suboptimal institutional network in which the agents “cheat” their principals. Received: 14 June 1995 / Accepted: 09 August 1999     

Labor force participation and pair-wise efficient contracts with search and bargaining

A “constant” wage is pair-wise inefficient in a standard search model when workers endogenously separate from employment. We derive a pair-wise efficient employment contract that involves workers paying a hiring fee (or bond) upon the formation of a match. We estimate the constant wage and pair-wise efficient contract assuming the hiring fee is unobservable, and find evidence to reject the pair-wise efficient contract in favor of the constant wage rule. A counterfactual experiment reveals the current level of labor force participation to be 9.6% below the efficient level, and a structural shift to the pair-wise efficient contract improves welfare by roughly 3.5%.     

Entry deterrence under financial intermediation with private information and hidden contracts

We study how financial intermediation affects market entry when an incumbent monopolist enters into non-public, short-term contracts for outside funds. Financial intermediation serves as a commitment device to avoid costly signalling, but at the same time leads to strategic experimentation by the bank. Without public commitment to the financial contract, signal-jamming affects the bank's strategic experiment. Unlike the previous literature on signalling and signal-jamming in entry deterrence in which entry is unaffected or its change indeterminate, the altered strategic experiment has the effect of increasing the amount of entry to the market. Received: 19 January 2004, Accepted: 18 May 2005 JEL Classification: C73, D8, L1 We thank Markus Daniel, Spiros Bougheas, James Peck, Tony Creane, two anonymous referees, the associate editor and seminar participants at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin, Emory, Ohio State, and Royal Holloway Universities and the Universities of Wisconsin, Nottingham and East Anglia, as well as Matt Jackson for editorial assistance.     

Psychological and implied contracts in organizations

Two forms of unwritten contracts derive from relations between organizations and their members. Psychological contracts are individual beliefs in a reciprocal obligation between the individual and the organization. Implied contracts are mutual obligations characterizing interactions existing at the level of the relationship (e.g., dyadic, interunit). Employee/employer relations and changing conditions of employment give rise to issues not addressed in conventional transaction-oriented models of motivation and individual responses. The development, maintenance, and violation of psychological and implied contracts are described along with their organizational implications.Promise is most given when least is said. (George Chapman,Hero and Leander, 1598)     

论几种特殊合同中的要约与承诺

文章指出,在招投标形式订立合同的过程中,招标属于合同上的要约邀请,投标为要约,定标是承诺,但招标属于必须经过的阶段,投标的撤回随意性比较大,定标采取投邮生效主义。在拍卖订立合同的过程中,各行为的性质视增价拍卖和减价拍卖而有所不同。增价拍卖也会因为有底价拍卖和无底价拍卖的区别而导致行为性质的差异。招股说明书的要式特征,使其虽然不满足要约的条件,但法定成为了要约,而且不可撤回和撤销。     

Temporarily asymmetric information and labour contracts

Under the assumption that workers are more heavily credit rationed than firms, the standard model of testing and self-selection in the labour market is extended. The two main findings are that ex post inefficient termination may be used as a self-selection device and that when workers can be of more than two different productivities, only the best worker should be overpaid.     

On moral hazard and nonexclusive contracts

We study an economy where intermediaries compete over contracts in a nonexclusive insurance market affected by moral hazard. In this context, we show that, contrarily to what is commonly believed, market equilibria may fail to be efficient even if the planner is not allowed to enforce exclusivity of trades (third best inefficiency). Our setting is the same as that of Bisin and Guaitoli [Bisin, A., Guaitoli, D., 2004. Moral hazard with nonexclusive contracts. Rand Journal of Economics 2, 306–328]. We hence argue that some of the equilibrium conditions they imposed are not necessary, and we exhibit a set of equilibrium allocations which fail to satisfy them.