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.     

Managerial Incentive Problems: A Dynamic Perspective

The paper studies how a person's concern for a future career may influence his or her incentives to put in effort or make decisions on the job. In the model, the person's productive abilities are revealed over time through observations of performance. There are no explicit output-contingent contracts, but since the wage in each period is based on expected output and expected output depends on assessed ability, an "implicit contract" links today's performance to future wages. An incentive problem arises from the person's ability and desire to influence the learning process, and therefore the wage process, by taking unobserved actions that affect today's performance. The fundamental incongruity in preferences is between the individual's concern for human capital returns and the firm's concern for financial returns. The two need be only weakly related. It is shown that career motives can be beneficial as well as detrimental, depending on how well the two kinds of capital returns are aligned.     

Bargaining under incomplete information, fairness, and the hold-up problem

In the hold-up problem incomplete contracts cause the proceeds of relationship-specific investments to be allocated by bargaining. This paper investigates the corresponding investment incentives if individuals have heterogeneous fairness preferences. Individual preferences are taken to be private information. Investments can then signal preferences and thereby influence beliefs and bargaining behavior. In consequence, individuals might choose high investments in order not to signal information that is unfavorable in the ensuing bargaining.     

Asymmetric contracts,cash flows and risk taking of mutual funds

Fund managers in delegated portfolio management face asymmetries in their compensation contracts and in the fund flows contingent on their funds' performance relative to a benchmark. In this study we investigate the impacts of contract asymmetry and fund flow asymmetry on the risk-taking behavior of open-end funds whose delegation contracts are performance based, and show that their impacts are opposite. When the two asymmetries apply simultaneously, the impact of one on the fund's risk-taking alleviates the impact of the other. Raising the return-sharing ratio cannot make the manager take more risk, but increasing the cash flow volume can. We also show that the tracking-error variance can measure the degree of risk that the fund takes.     

Strategic Delegation By Unobservable Incentive Contracts

Many strategic interactions in the real world take place among delegates empowered to act on behalf of others. Although there may be a multitude of reasons why delegation arises in reality, one intriguing possibility is that it yields a strategic advantage to the delegating party. In the case where only one party has the option to delegate, we analyse the possibility that strategic delegation arises as an equilibrium outcome under completely unobservable incentive contracts within the class of two-person extensive form games. We show that delegation may arise solely due to strategic reasons in quite general economic environments even under unobservable contracts. Furthermore, under some reasonable restrictions on out-of-equilibrium beliefs and actions of the outside party, strategic delegation is shown to be the only equilibrium outcome.     

THE EFFECT OF OWNERSHIP IN NGOS’ COMMERCIAL VENTURES

ABSTRACT: Amidst pressure to become self‐financing, Non‐Governmental Organizations (NGOs) have become increasingly involved in profit‐generating business ventures. Because NGOs are traditionally financed by donations with the expectation that they focus on their social mission, the commercialization of NGOs has generated criticism. This paper examines the effect of ownership on investment incentives in NGOs’ commercial ventures, using an incomplete contracts framework. NGO‐ownership helps minimize the tension between primary social mission and managerial decisions. However, external ownership provides better incentives to invest in mission‐enhancing innovations. Finally, because relationships with firms are repeated, NGOs may use relational contracts to align their ventures’ incentives. However, such contracts need to be credible to work.     

Imperfect competition in two-sided matching markets

This paper considers a simple equilibrium model of an imperfectly competitive two-sided matching market. Firms and workers may have heterogeneous preferences over matches on the other side, and the model allows for both uniform and personalized wages or contracts. To make the model tractable, I use the Azevedo and Leshno (2013) framework, in which a finite number of firms is matched to a continuum of workers.In equilibrium, even if wages are exogenous and fixed, firms have incentives to strategically reduce their capacity, to increase the quality of their worker pool. The intensity of incentives to reduce capacity is given by a simple formula, analogous to the classic Cournot model, but depends on different moments of the distribution of preferences. I compare markets with uniform and personalized wages. For fixed quantities, markets with personalized wages always yield higher efficiency than markets with uniform wages, but may be less efficient if firms reduce capacity to avoid bidding too much for star workers.     

An analysis of the length of labour and financial contracts: a study for Spain

This study investigates the connection between the duration of financial contracts and that of labour contracts. Workers with long–term contracts have incentives to invest in training. This makes them attractive to the entrepreneur. Furthermore, this behaviour will be reinforced if financial contracts are long–term, because it reduces the probability of an early liquidation as well as the dismissal of trained workers. As a conclusion, significant increases in the length of financing contracts should be accompanied by corresponding increases in the length of labour contracts. Support for this theoretical contention is found by testing it on a dataset composed of Spanish manufacturing firms for the period 1991–2000.     

Job Protection versus Contracts At‐Will: Trading‐Off Entrenchment and Shirking

I compare two types of employment contracts: those offering job protection and at‐will contracts. Their respective performances reveal the following trade‐off: at‐will contracts provide cheaper incentives for agents not to shirk, but they can induce the opportunistic actions of agents to make themselves less dispensable (“entrenchment”). One implication of the model is that more senior managers, such as chief executive officers, should receive more protection, for example, through contracts that are explicitly not at‐will or contracts that specify a longer duration.     

Incentive effects of funding contracts: an experiment

We examine the incentive effects of funding contracts on entrepreneurial effort and on allocative efficiency. We experiment with funding contracts that differ in the structure of investor repayment and, thus, in their incentives for the provision of entrepreneurial effort. Theoretically the replacement of a standard debt contract by a repayment-equivalent non-monotonic contract reduces effort distortions and increases efficiency. Likewise, distortions can be mitigated by replacing outside equity by a repayment-equivalent standard-debt contract. We test both hypotheses in the laboratory. Our results reveal that the incentive effects of funding contracts must be experienced before they are reflected in observed behavior. With sufficient experience, observed behavior is either consistent with or close to theoretical predictions and supports both hypotheses. If we allow for entrepreneur-sided manipulations of project outcomes, we find that non-monotonic contracts lose much of their appeal.     

Contracts with endogenous information

I study covert information acquisition and reporting in a principal agent problem allowing for general technologies of information acquisition. When posteriors satisfy two dimensional versions of the standard First Order Stochastic Dominance and Concavity/Convexity of the Distribution Function conditions, a first-order approach is justified. Under the same conditions, informativeness and riskiness of reports are equivalent. High powered contracts, that make the agent's informational rents more risky, are used to increase incentives for information acquisition, insensitive contracts are used to reduce incentives for information gathering. The value of information to the agent is always positive. The value of information to the principal is ambiguous.     

Coexistence of long-term and short-term contracts

We study the length of agreements in a market in which infinitely-lived firms contract with agents that live for two periods. Firms differ in the expected values of their projects, as do workers in their abilities to manage projects. Worker effort is not contractible and worker ability is revealed during the relationship. The market dictates the trade-off between sorting and incentives. Short- and long-term contracts often coexist: The best firms always use short-term contracts to hire high-ability senior workers, firms with less profitable projects use short-term contracts to save on the cost of hiring junior workers, whereas intermediate firms use long-term agreements to provide better incentives to their workers. We relate our results to the optimal assignment literature that follows Becker (1973).     

Strategic Research Partnerships: A Managerial Perspective

Private sector incentives to participate in research partnerships can be grouped roughly into two categories: cost-economizing incentives and strategic incentives. This paper summarizes the argument in two streams of thought that are often identified with these two sides: the transaction-cost/incomplete contracts approach and the strategic management approach. The paper recounts business motives to engage in research partnerships in each and points out that differentiating between more traditional economic perspectives (transaction costs, incomplete contracts) and strategic management/organizational theory perspectives (strategic networks, resource-dependent view, dynamic capabilities, knowledge-based view, organizational learning, options approach) may not be as sharp as one might suppose at first. The complementary nature of these perspectives should be encouraging for theoreticians looking for a more integrated model of collaboration.     

Strategic Research Partnerships: A Managerial Perspective

Private sector incentives to participate in research partnerships can be grouped roughly into two categories: cost-economizing incentives and strategic incentives. This paper summarizes the argument in two streams of thought that are often identified with these two sides: the transaction-cost/incomplete contracts approach and the strategic management approach. The paper recounts business motives to engage in research partnerships in each and points out that differentiating between more traditional economic perspectives (transaction costs, incomplete contracts) and strategic management/organizational theory perspectives (strategic networks, resource-dependent view, dynamic capabilities, knowledge-based view, organizational learning, options approach) may not be as sharp as one might suppose at first. The complementary nature of these perspectives should be encouraging for theoreticians looking for a more integrated model of collaboration.     

Company interests and foreign aid policy: Playing donors off against one another

The evidence on conditionality indicates that this instrument sometimes works, and sometimes does not work. We suggest that third parties to the donor-recipient relationship influence the aid disbursement. The halt in aid that should follow non-compliance could trigger the recipient to cancel contracts with companies from donor countries, which creates incentives for the companies to put pressure towards aid disbursement. We use a multi-agent triadic model of the relationships between a recipient and two donors and two companies to illustrate that recipients may act strategically to make third parties (like companies and others) influence the disbursement decision. Failing to take account of third parties’ role yields the opposite result; conditionality becomes successful.     

Does Price Stability Exacerbate Labour Market Rigidities in the EMU?

How will the commitment to price stability affect labour market rigidities in the European Monetary Union? I explore a model where firms choose between fixed wage contracts (where the employer cannot lay off the worker, and the wage can only be changed by mutual consent), or contracts where employment is at will, so that either party may terminate employment (with strong similarities to temporary jobs). A fixed wage contract provides better incentives for investment and training, while employment at will facilitates efficient mobility. Inflation erodes the real value of a fixed contract wage over time, and badly matched workers are more likely to quit for other jobs. Disinflation has opposing effects on labour market rigidity: fixed wage contracts become more rigid in real terms, but fewer firms will choose fixed wage contracts.     

“(MA)LINGERING ON THE DISABLED LIST”

In this article, we examine two offsetting incentives that may affect a baseball player's willingness to play with injuries. We allow for the usual disincentive effects associated with long‐term contracts, while also incorporating the importance of the incentives associated with contract renewal. Our results are consistent with the previous work that showed those likely to retire at the end of their current contracts have an increased incentive to shirk. For those who expect to re‐sign a subsequent contract, however, we find that players tend to step up their effort as they approach the final year of their contract. (JEL L83)     

货币薪酬能激励高管承担风险吗

有关“风险承担”（risk taking）的研究是近年来特别是全球金融危机背景下财务学研究的热点问题之一。本文研究结果表明：（1）货币薪酬激励的增加能提升高管承担风险的水平;（2）最终控制人性质和公司成长性会影响两者之间的关系,在国有企业以及公司成长性较低的公司,货币薪酬激励与风险承担之间的正相关关系较弱;（3）风险承担水平的提高能促进公司绩效的提升;（4）进一步研究发现,风险承担在高管薪酬激励与企业绩效之间发挥中介效用作用。这些结论在采用两阶段最小二乘法（2SLS）和三阶段最小二乘法（3SLS）处理内生性问题等稳健性测试后依然成立。因此,本文从“风险承担”这一新的视角深化了有关高管薪酬激励降低代理问题并提升公司绩效的研究,也为中国上市公司尤其是国有上市公司高管薪酬契约设计的有效性提供了借鉴和参考价值。     

Career Concerns,Monetary Incentives and Job Design*

We study optimal incentive contracts when commitments are limited, and agents have multiple tasks and career concerns. The agent's career concerns are determined by the outside market. We show that the principal might want to give the strongest explicit incentives to agents far from retirement to account for the fact that career concerns might induce behavior in conflict with the principal's preferences. Furthermore, we show that maximized welfare might be decreasing in the strength of career concerns, that optimal incentives can be positively correlated with various measures of uncertainty, and that career incentives have strong implications for optimal job design.     

BOT projects: Incentives and efficiency

In recent years, governments have been increasingly adopting Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) contracts for large infrastructure projects. However, BOT contracts have received little attention from economists. The apparent agency problem in BOT projects has never been analyzed. In this paper, we develop a model to examine the incentives, efficiency and regulation in BOT contracts. We show that a BOT contract with a price regulation during the concession period and a license extension after the concession period is capable of achieving full efficiency. Both license extension and price control are observed in many real-world BOT projects. We also investigate the efficiency in such contracts by considering other factors, including time consistency, price ceiling, foreign ownership, and the lack of price regulation.