Moral Hazard and Renegotiation with Multiple Agents

We investigate the effects of contract renegotiation in multi-agentsituations where risk-averse agents negotiate a contract offer to theprincipal after the agents observe a common, unverifiable perfect signalabout their actions. We show that renegotiation with multiple agentsreduces the cost of implementing any implementable action profile downto the first-best level, even though the principal cannot observe theagents' actions. Moreover, it is sufficient for the principal to use a"simple" initial contract, in the sense that it consists of nomore than a single sharing scheme for each agent and the total payments tothe agents are the same regardless of the realised state. An importantimplication is that decentralization, in the sense of delegated negotiationand proposals from the agents, can be as effective as centralized schemesthat utilize revelation mechanisms in unrestricted ways.