When vagueness induces indirect competition: strategic incompleteness of contracts

Summary. A class of employment contracts entailing production targets and consequent rewards is studied. In a nondiscriminatory environment, a principal hiring many agents faces the problem of writing a common contract which induces the highest possible effort from each one of his agents. While a very high target may get the best out of highly skilled agents, low skilled ones tend to shirk. On the other hand, although low targets make every agent put positive effort, there are efficiency losses from the high skilled agents. Also, in such environments the principal often has better information regarding the skills of all his agents than what each agent has regarding the rest of the agents at work. We show that if skills of agents are sufficiently close, the informed principal earns strictly higher profits by offering incomplete contracts as against being specific, as incomplete contracts reduce flow of information and induce indirect competition amongst agents. Received: May 19, 2000; revised version: August 28, 2001     

部分契约、控制权转移与揭示机制

区别于完全契约和不完全契约理论,基于对名义控制权和实际控制权的区分,Aghion等(2002;2003)提出部分契约概念,强调代理人人力资本的重要性和实际控制权的可转移性.在此基础上,我们放松Aghion等(2003)的研究假设,基于贝叶斯法则对该理论做一般化分析并对不同状态下转移控制机的机制效力进行比较.我们强调在更一般的情况下,除了引人价格机制以外,引入声誉作为保障该信息揭示机制效力的激励约束机制是必要的且比价格机制列为适用.该理论对于解释信誉,授权等理论问题,以及指导中国公司治理实践具有参考价值.     

Learning to trust in indefinitely repeated games

Although it is well known that trust and trustworthiness (i.e., the fulfillment of trust) are important behaviors for the fulfillment of incomplete contracts, less is known about how the economic environment influences them. In this paper we design an experiment to examine how exogenously determined (stochastic) past relationship lengths affect trust and trustworthiness in new relationships. We find that shorter-lasting relationships have an immediate negative impact on both behaviors in the relationships that immediately follow, while longer-lasting relationships have the opposite effect. The effect of stochastic end-points declines for trustworthiness but not for trust as subjects gain experience, indicating that trust is able to rebound when longer-lasting relationships follow shorter-lasting ones.     

Buyer-Option Contracts Restored: Renegotiation, Inefficient Threats, and the Hold-Up Problem

"Buyer-option" contracts, in which the buyer selects the productvariant to be traded and chooses whether to accept delivery,are often used to solve holdup problems. We present a simplegame that focuses sharply on subgames in which the buyer proposesinefficient actions in order to improve his bargaining position.We argue for one of several alternative ways to model this situation.We then apply that modeling choice to recent models of the foundationsof incomplete contracts and show that a buyer-option contractis sufficient to induce first-best outcomes.     

不完全合同理论的新视角——基于演化经济学的分析

长期以来,主流不完全合同理论一直没有在理论逻辑上圆满解答"合同为什么不完全",其理论基础存在很大的争议,这也导致其研究范式存在内在的逻辑矛盾与冲突,大量有关不完全合同的研究本质上却是关注完全合同。本文尝试从演化经济学的视角重新审视不完全合同理论,强调必须从知识不完全性的视角来阐释合同的不完全性,认为个体的有限认知是合同不完全性的重要理论基础,在此视角下探讨了不完全合同的功能、生成及其演变,并重新考察了权威在不完全合同中的作用。     

Limited observability as a constraint in contract design

Limited observability is the assumption that economic agents can only observe a finite amount of information. Given this constraint, contracts among agents are necessarily finite and incomplete in comparison to the ideal complete contract that we model as infinite in detail. We consider the extent that finite contracts can approximate a complete contract. The objectives of the paper are: (i) to identify properties of agents’ preferences that determine whether or not finiteness of contracts causes significant inefficiency; (ii) to evaluate the performance of finite contracts against the ideal optimal contract in a bilateral bargaining model.     

Measurement distortion and missing contingencies in optimal contracts

Summary Theory suggests that optimal contracts should include many contingencies to achieve optimal risk sharing. However, in practice, few contracts are as complex as theory suggests. This paper develops a model which is consistent with this observation. The lack of risk sharing results from the interplay of two factors. First, contingencies must be based on information produced by measurement systems, which may be manipulable. Second, when two parties to a contract meet, they often have incomplete information. The type of contract offered may reveal information about the party who proposes it. Different types of agents have different preferences over contingent contracts, because they have different abilities to manipulate the measurement system. These differences in preferences allow the parties to signal their types through the contracts they offer. Noncontingent contracts may be chosen in equilibrium because they are the only contracts which do not give any type an incentive to distort the measurement system and, hence, do not reveal information about the party proposing the contract.We have benefited from conversations with Oliver Hart, Rick Lambert, Michael Riordan and Jean Tirole and the comments of Michel Habib, Nick Yannelis and two anonymous referees. Financial support from the National Science Foundation under grants SES-8920048 and SES-8720589 is gratefully acknowledged.     

Renegotiation on incomplete procurement contracts

This article examines the impact of incomplete contracts on procurement costs in road construction auctions. Ex ante contracts in these auctions often fail to specify all of the potential construction contingencies, and consequently, changes in scope are necessary after construction begins. Using Vermont road construction contract data, this study finds evidence that there is a statistically significant difference in costs of firms between auctions with and without extra work adjustments. Substantial adaptation costs are responsible for the higher procurement outlays in incomplete contract. I also find that bidders inflate their bids to incorporate risk premiums in incomplete contracts; however, my estimates suggest that this bidding behaviour does not affect their profit margins.     

国内消费者对保险代理人信任影响因素实证研究

长期以来,国内保险代理人不断发生各种不诚信行为,导致了消费者对整个保险代理人群体的不信任。怎样重建消费者对保险代理人的信任,成为当前关注的焦点。通过对国内四个城市（上海、北京、广州和重庆）548份问卷调查的数据分析,得到如下结论：第一,消费者的保险知识和代理人讨人喜欢的能力对消费者信任代理人没有显著的影响;第二,良好交易经历对消费者信任代理人的影响力最大,其次分别是代理人的专业业务能力和机会主义意图;第三,保险公司信誉对消费者信任代理人有着重要影响;第四,消费者信任倾向的影响力并不像在其他行业实证研究中那么大。     

Employee types and endogenous organizational design: An experiment

When managers are sufficiently guided by social preferences, incentive provision through an organizational mode based on informal implicit contracts may provide a cost-effective alternative to a more formal mode based on explicit contracts and active monitoring. This paper reports the results from a stylized laboratory experiment designed to test whether subjects in the role of firm owner rely on the social preferences of other (‘employee’) subjects with whom they are matched when choosing which payoff version of a simple trust game these employee subjects should play (‘the organizational mode’). Our main finding is that they do so, albeit in a different way than theory predicts. The importance of the first mover's social preferences for trusting behavior is recognized by the owner subjects, but the significant (first order) impact second movers’ social preferences have on trusting behavior of first movers seems to be overlooked.     

A theory of codetermination

Summary and conclusions This paper has developed a framework of theory within which codetermination, collective bargaining, individual bargaining, and workers' management may be compared. This has required a rather long digression on the theory of labor contracts in general when effort is endogenous but is wholly specified by the contract (section II) and when effort is multidimensional and labor contracts are incomplete (section III). When labor contracts are incomplete, suboptimization behavior results, and this in turn implies inefficiency. The inefficiency is displayed in a maximization problem by a structure which formally resembles the Lipsey-Lancaster second-best solution. Codetermination permits improved efficiency by creating a context of joint management decision in which some of the free variables may be jointly determined, with the result that some second-best constraints are relaxed. Thus the theory allows a possibility that power-sharing can in itself shift the effort-productivity frontier outward. This is an empirical question, of course, but one which is excluded from consideration by theories in the neoclassical and Illyrian tradition which are based on homogenous labor and complete labor contracts. Thus, the theory set forth here should supplant the less general neoclassical and Illyrian hypotheses unless and until evidence is offered which supports those hypotheses.The author is indebted to an anonymous referee for several suggestions which improved the paper, to W. Lynn Holmes and Paul Rappoport of Temple University and to Samuel Shrager of Temple University and Vilanova University for clarifying discussions on several aspects of the paper. The author is also indebted to other Temple University colleagues and to other scholars too numerous to mention for their help and encouragement. Errors and omissions are the fault of the author.     

Information and crowding externalities

Summary. We analyze a model in which agents have to make a binary choice under incomplete information about the state of the world, but also care about coordination with other agents who have the same problem. In some of these situations, the larger the share choosing the same alternative, the better off are agents. In others, if too many people choose the same alternative, agents could be worse off, due to crowding externalities. Agents receive public and private information about the state of the world. We determine whether agents rely more on private or public information, and whether or not their choice behavior is socially efficient. We characterize existence conditions for equilibria in which either all available information, or only the public information is used for decisions, compare the two equilibria in terms of welfare, and analyze the effects of better information. Surprisingly, increasing signal accuracy may be welfare decreasing.Received: 24 March 2004, Revised: 19 November 2004, JEL Classification Numbers: D82. Correspondence to: C. Robert ClarkWe would like to thank Ig Horstmann, Gilbert Laporte, Andrew Leach, Matthias Messner, Bernard Sinclair-Desgagné, Howard Thomas, Nicholas Yannelis, and two anonymous referees for helpful comments. The first author wishes to acknowledge the Strategic Research Grant he received from HEC Montreal for this project.     

Strategic Innovation with Complete and Incomplete Labour Market Contracts

In a model of strategic R&D competition between two firms that negotiate with independent unions we show that: (i) incomplete labour market contracts may Pareto-dominate complete labour market contracts (ii) even when complete contracts Pareto-dominate incomplete contracts, economies can get stuck in the incomplete contract equilibrium. These conclusions provide additional strategic reasons why complete labour market contracts may not be used—even if they were feasible. We propose two testable predictions to discriminate between complete and incomplete contracts: (i) the variance of wages is lower with complete contracts; (ii) the variance of employment is higher under complete contracts.     

声誉、债务与会计稳健性——信任视角的一项经验研究

文章从信任的角度研究了公司声誉如何影响债务契约对会计稳健性的要求。声誉较好的债务人能够赢得债权人的信任,从而降低债务契约对会计稳健性的要求。文章运用我国上市公司的数据,采用三种声誉度量方法,实证检验发现债务水平对会计稳健性有正向影响,债务人的良好声誉能够降低这种正向影响。文章以信任概念为基础整合了声誉和会计稳健性的理论关系,拓展了财务会计研究的视野,并为声誉对法律的替代作用提供了新的经验证据。     

Optimal incentive contracts under inequity aversion

We analyze the classic moral hazard problem with the additional assumption that agents are inequity averse. The presence of inequity aversion alters the structure of optimal contracts. When the concern for equity becomes more important, there is convergence towards linear sharing rules. The sufficient statistics result is violated. Depending on the environment, contracts may be either overdetermined, i.e. include non-informative performance measures, or incomplete, i.e. neglect informative performance measures. Finally, our model delivers a simple rationale for team based incentives, implying wage compression.     

Remittances and rural credit markets: Evidence from Senegal

This study investigates the relationship between remittances and credit markets in Senegal, focusing on rural areas where financial constraints are more challenging. Using a household fixed effects model, the findings show that remittances and credit markets are complements; namely, the receipt of remittances is positively associated with the likelihood of having a loan in a household. This means that migrants can increase the reliability of their family members and close relatives back home through their remittances, insuring them vis‐à‐vis lenders for their credit contracts. They are the collateral or the “element of trust” in the credit contract between the borrower and the lender, representing a potential alternative in case of non‐repayment. This result is robust to alternative models and various robustness tests mitigating the potential endogeneity of remittances. A detailed analysis also shows that the relationship between remittances and credit markets is mainly driven by loans taken for consumption and food, in particular, as well as loans provided by informal institutions.     

不完全契约视角下的财务治理机制分析

作为公司治理的重要内容,在本质上,财务治理是对公司财权进行的一整套制度安排。具体地说,这一套制度安排必须通过与企业有直接利益关系的各当事方缔结财务契约来实现。本文提出,构成财务治理基础的财务契约是一种不完全契约,这种契约的不完全性将会产生激励不足和约束失控两个主要影响。因此,我们的财务治理机制应该针对财务契约的不完全性来进行设计,力争最大限度地降低不完全财务契约造成的负面影响,提高财务治理的效率。     

An empirical study on contractual heterogeneity within the firm: the ‘vertical integration–franchise contracts’ mix

This paper tests a discrete choice model on the mix of franchised and company owned outlets (contractual heterogeneity) within the firm. This is often explained by the existing literature as due to heterogeneous characteristics of the outlets. However, correspondence between outlets and contracts characteristics is not often observed in reality. An explanation is proposed which suggests that contract mixing is driven by the contractual choice of both principal and agents, and that heterogeneous agents will choose contracts that match their characteristics. This hypothesis is supported by econometric results, based on outlet level microdata collected by means of a survey of UK firms.     

Uncertainty,trust, and the regulation of the banking industry

This paper suggests that, in presence of uncertainty, individual choices are made on the basis of subjective evaluations, and the transmission of information is too expensive, so that the decision-making process must largely be based on other agents’ knowledge. Banks operate by developing a network of personal relationships, based on trust, that allows agents to make use of the subjective knowledge of others. The deregulation process of the financial industry of the 1990s was based on the principle that information disclosure would make the market for securities more efficient, increasing risk diversification, and making the financial system safer. Many innovative financial contracts, however, were not backed by trust and reputation mechanism as traditional banking activities. The shadow banking system emerging from these market-based transactions was thus much more risky and fragile than the traditional one, based on private information and unwritten rules of conduct.     

The effect of ambiguity aversion on reward scheme choice

We test the implications of ambiguity aversion in a principal–agent problem with multiple agents. Models of ambiguity aversion suggest that, under ambiguity, comparative compensation schemes may become more attractive than independent wage contracts. We test this by presenting agents with a choice between comparative reward schemes and independent contracts, which are designed such that under uncertainty about output distributions (that is, under ambiguity), ambiguity averse agents should typically prefer comparative reward schemes, independent of their degree of risk aversion. We indeed find that the share of agents who choose the comparative scheme is higher under ambiguity.