optimal incentive schemes with many agents the grossman hart principal agent model of moral hazard is extended to the multiple agent case to explore the use of relative performance in optimal incentive contracting under the assumption that the principal chooses incentive schemes to implement agent actions as nash equilibria necessary and sufficient conditions are derived for the optimality of independent contracts of rank order tournaments and for attainability of the first best in this context the relation of the principal s welfare to the correlation between the underlying randomness in outputs of different agents is also investigated finally some problems with the nash equilibrium implementation assumption are discussed in this paper we extend the grossman hart analysis of the principal agent problem to a multiple agent setting in this version of the problem a risk neutral principal is assumed to observe the output or a performance index for each risk averse agent the output of any agent depends on a privately observable action chosen by the agent and an exogenous random variable the realization of which is not observed either by the principal or by the agent before choosing its action we especially focus attention on the role of relative performance evaluation in optimal incentive contracts and the way this depends on properties of the underlying production technology and the joint distribution of the random variables affecting the outputs of different agents in section 2 of the paper we consider the principal s problem of finding an optimal incentive scheme and an action tuple for agents subject to the constraint that the latter be implemented as a nash equilibrium between agents by the chosen incentive scheme where agents must attain at least their reservation utilities a characterization of optimal incentive schemes is derived analogous to the grossman hart characterization for the single agent problem this characterization is then utilized to find sufficient and generically necessary conditions for a optimal contracts for any agent to be independent of the performance of other agents and b optimality of rank order tournaments where payments depend solely on ordinal comparisons of output across agents we then describe a necessary and sufficient condition for the principal to extract maximum advantage from relative performance clauses i e achieve the first best level of expected utility in the multiagent situation an implication of this result is that under fairly weak conditions perfect correlation in the underlying production uncertainties for different agents enables the principal to attain the first best if and only if sufficiently heavy penalties can be inflicted on agents we then enquire what happens in intermediate cases of non perfect correlation it turns out that while in general the principal s welfare is a continuous function of the correlation coefficient it is not always nondecreasing in the latter because the correlation coefficient is not a general measure of association between two random variables but rather a measure of linear association between them

repeated moral hazard and contracts with memory the case of risk neutrality we consider a repeated moral hazard problem where both the principal and the wealth constrained agent are risk neutral in each of two periods the agent can exert unobservable effort leading to success or failure incentives provided in the second period act as carrot and stick for the first period so that the effort level induced in the second period is higher after a first period success than after a failure if renegotiation cannot be prevented the principal may prefer a project with lower returns i e a project may be too good to be financed or similarly an agent can be overqualified this article offers a new perspective on dynamic moral hazard problems consider a riskneutral principal who can hire a risk neutral but wealth constrained agent the agent can exert unobservable effort which increases the likelihood of success in the one shot problem there is a well known trade off between effort incentives and rent extraction which leads to a downward distorted effort level compared to the first best solution we extend the standard model by assuming that there is a second period in which the principal can make an investment to continue the project and the agent can again exert unobservable effort it turns out that there are several interesting insights that so far have escaped the literature on repeated moral hazard which was focused on the case of risk averse agents in particular if the principal can commit not to renegotiate the second period incentives can be used to partially circumvent the limited liability constraint in the second period the principal induces the agent to choose a particularly high effort level following a first period success and a particularly low effort level following a first period failure the prospect of a higher second period rent following a first period success motivates the agent to exert more effort in the first period i e rents in the second period act as reward and punishment for the first period it should be emphasized that we assume no technological impact of a first period success or failure on the second period technology nevertheless an optimal dynamic contract exhibits memory hence if an outsider observed today a principal agent pair that was successful and another identical pair that was not successful he would be right to predict that the first pair also is more likely to succeed tomorrow in other words a serial correlation across periods which we sometimes refer to as a hot hand effect is generated endogenously merely based on incentive considerations 2

collusion and discrimination in organizations abstract in a principal multi agent setting we investigate how optimal contracts should be modified under relative performance evaluation when agents collude agents may write side contracts which are not contingent on their effort choices but indirectly control them through side transfers we show that the optimal collusion proof contract is to introduce a discriminatory policy in the sense that the wage schemes offered to agents depend on their identities even if they are identical with respect to productive abilities such discriminatory wage schemes explain the organizational strategy of divide and conquer as an optimal response to collusion

risk allocation and the costs and benefits of public private partnerships we study the agency costs of delegated public service provision focusing on the link between organizational forms and uncertainty at project implementation we consider a dynamic multitask moral hazard environment where the mapping between efiort and performance is ex ante uncertain but new information may come along during operations our analysis points out at the e ciency gains that bundling planning and implementation as under public private partnerships can bring in terms of better project design and lower operational costs bundling also results in increasingly better performance as uncertainty is reduced by growing experience in the sector bundling should instead be viewed with caution when the private sector seeks to radically innovate on public service provision or to introduce new services but lacks the knowledge and expertise to anticipate the impact of the innovative design procedure technology on the cost of operations the compounding of asymmetric information ex post plus moral hazard and renegotiation may generate diseconomies of scope in agency costs which for high operational risk can make unbundling optimal in this context the use of private flnance can help re establishing the beneflt of bundling only if lenders have su cient expertise to help assessing project risks

moral hazard with several agents abstract we consider a situation in which a principal hires two agents whose cooperation is technically profitable and study three models that incorporate different assumptions about the agents cooperative behavior we find a close relationship between the agents commitment capacity and the characteristics of the optimal contract a greater capacity to cooperate leads to more efficient outcomes we also show that unless agents form a team the efficient level of mutual help is not achieved in equilibrium

mutual monitoring and corporate governance abstract mutual monitoring in a well structured authority system can mitigate the agency problem i empirically examine whether the number two executive in a firm if given authority incentive and channels for communication and influence is able to monitor and constrain the potentially self interested ceo i find strong evidence that 1 measures of the presence and extent of mutual monitoring from the no 2 executive are positively related to future firm value tobin s q 2 the beneficial effect is more pronounced for firms with stronger incentives for the no 2 to monitor and with higher information asymmetry between the boards and the ceos and 3 mutual monitoring is a substitute for other governance mechanisms the results suggest that mutual monitoring provides important checks and balances on ceo power

the relevance of attitudinal factors for the acceptance of energy policy measures a micro econometric analysis abstract this paper empirically examines the individual support of the german energy transition in total and especially of six single energy policy measures which are components of the energy transition our micro econometric analysis with binary and ordered probit models on the basis of data from a broad survey of citizens reveals the important role of several attitudinal factors with respect to our indicators for perceived personal costs of the energy transition the estimation results point to a weak evidence for economic self interest due to some negative correlations between expected energy price increases due to the energy transition and the support of single energy policy measures interestingly however the concern that the energy transition alone causes strong energy price increases is not shared by the majority of the respondents the estimation results also suggest that the support of several energy policy measures is strongly correlated with environmental values however the most important attitudinal factor is obviously political identification the econometric analysis suggests that an overall left green policy identification is positively correlated with the support of the energy transition in total and an identification with ecological policy is positively correlated with the acceptance of several single energy policy measures the econometric analysis especially supports the more sophisticated categorization of political orientation since for example a liberal conservative policy orientation is not significantly correlated with the support of the energy transition in total

information extraction and norms of mutual protection abstract we study a class of moral hazard economies in which a principal interacts with several agents in these economies first best allocations can be implemented via full information extraction when side trades between agents can be restricted when instead side trades cannot be restricted the ability of the principal to extract information from the agents is severely hampered in this context side trades take the form of informal contracts which can be directly interpreted as norms of mutual protection which are indeed quite common among extended family members as well as inside various social political and religious groups

contract delegation with bargaining i introduction public procurement is a very important part of economic activity it accounts for about 20 of gross domestic product gdp in the united states and 16 in the european union eu countries 1 therefore it is not surprising that many interest groups are at the stake whenever aspects of public procurement procedures are discussed to limit the influence of these groups the purpose of legislation in the united states and the european community has been to unify public procurement procedures and restrict the discretionary power of contracting officers and agencies at lower administrative levels the federal acquisition regulation far in 2005 in the united states and directive 2004 18 ec of the european parliament in 2004 are examples of this one of the most important aspects in public procurement is the extent to which subcontracting is allowed traditionally subcontracting has been judged negatively for example in construction which amounts to a substantial part of public procurement the far prevents contracts from being awarded to a single firm that supplies both design and engineering services i e it requires contract centralization however recently most states have legislations that allow for exceptions like the use of the design build method i e they allow contract decentralization lam chan and chan 2006 report that nowadays more than one third of the construction projects in the united states and up to 50 in japan use the design build approach economic theory should explain whether this is because of the increased influence of pressure groups or if there exists an economic rational for this tendency however economic theory has had difficulty in explaining the superiority of subcontracting to see this consider a general contractor or principal who needs two suppliers or agents to realize a project either he she can contract directly both of them or contract only one supplier and let him her subcontract the other subcontracting obviously implies a loss of control over the subcontractee s contract for the general contractor however because he she can always replicate the same contracts if he she contracts directly with both suppliers it is not easy to see the advantages of subcontracting a common assumption in this literature is that the principal has all the bargaining power and can make a take it or leave it offer to the agent regarding public procurement this is a realistic assumption in cases in which there are many suppliers but it fails to apply in cases in which the principal only can choose among a small number of suppliers for example this is the case in public procurement of defense systems aeronautic and space equipment or specific construction facilities such as water depuration plants airports or electric power plants although procurement in these cases is also based on fixed price cost reimbursement and incentive contracts usually it also allows for negotiations so section 15 3 of far states that negotiations are exchanges in either a competitive or sole source environment between the government and offerors that are undertaken with the intent of allowing the offeror to revise its proposal these negotiations may include bargaining bargaining includes persuasion alteration of assumptions and positions give and take and may apply to price schedule technical requirements type of contract or other terms of a proposed contract this means that economic theory should take into account that contract design includes bargaining between parties at some stage of the process when contract centralization and decentralization are compared to analyze this issue a very stylized model is used to examine the advantages of centralized and decentralized organizations two agents work jointly on a project for a principal usually in public procurement this is a contracting officer who represents a public agency

decentralization hierarchies and incentives a mechanism design perspective separation of ownership from management multidivisional firm organizations delegation of production decisions to worker teams delegation of pricing and advertising decisions to retail franchisers reliance on intermediaries in trade or finance and distribution of regulatory authority across different agencies represent examples of organizations that delegate and distribute decision making authority instead of centralizing it this paper reviews literature on costs and benefits of delegated decision making in hierarchical organizations or contracting networks with regard to problems of incentives and coordination it starts by describing incentive and coordination costs of delegation in simple canonical examples of hierarchies where both information and incentives of different decisionmakers differ one class of models pertain to contexts where the classical revelation principle applies i e where costs of contractual complexity information processing or communication are absent agents do not collude and the mechanism designer can commit to the mechanism delegation may conceivably entail a loss of control and coordination arising from the divergence of information and incentives sufficient and necessary conditions for this loss to be mitigated entirely include risk neutrality top down contracting and monitoring of transfers or production assignments between subordinates the next class of models introduces communication costs that restrict the performance of centralized arrangements relative to delegation owing to a resulting loss of flexibility which has to be traded off against possible control losses of delegation finally consequences of collusion among agents is discussed which typically enlarge the range of circumstances under which delegation can attain optimal second best outcomes the paper concludes with a discussion of the relevance of this theoretical literature to recently emerging empirical studies of industrial organizations where delegated decision making plays an important role adoption of innovative human resource management practices new information technologies and retail franchising

a long march perspective on tobacco use in canada in this paper we present a model of tobacco demand in canada with a view to establishing if price and tax policy on the one hand or educational regulatory and demographic influences on the other have been primarily responsible for the substantial drop in consumption since 1980 we address some methodological and econometric issues that have escaped the attention of some analysts to this point using data for the period 1972 2000 we find that non price developments have had a strong deterrent effect and that the price elasticity of demand is now lower than even the recently obtained low estimates propose these findings have strong public policy content jel classification i12 c13 c22 une perspective de longue haleine sur l usage du tabac au canada dans ce memoire on presente un modele de la demande de tabac au canada en vue d etablir laquelle des deux strategies d une part la politique de prix et d imposition de taxes et d autre part les influences de l education de la reglementation ainsi que les changements demographiques a ete davantage responsable de la chute importante dans la consommation du tabac depuis 1980 le texte examine certains problemes methodologiques et econometriques qui ont jusqu ici echappea l attention des analystes a l aide de donnees pour la periode 1972 2000 on montre que les facteurs qui n ont rien a voir avec le prix ont eu un fort effet dissuasif et que l elasticite de la demande par rapport au prix est maintenant plus faible que les faibles elasticites suggerees par certaines etudes recentes ces resultats ont une grande importance pour la politique publique

who votes for public environmental goods in california evidence from a spatial analysis of voting for environmental ballot measures abstract voting referenda provide direct evidence of the demand for public goods a number of previous studies have used referenda to analyze the support for public environmental goods these studies have used aggregate data from large jurisdictional units usually counties and summary income measures such as the mean or median and have usually found that higher income areas offer greater support for environmental propositions we examine environmental referenda voting in california using census block group data spatial dependence controls and detailed income distribution data we find that household income has a negative marginal effect on environmental referenda voting for most of the income range when using census block data in addition controls for spatial dependence significantly reduce the magnitude of most coefficients this suggests that ols estimates of referenda determinants are biased we also show that county level data may be subject to severe aggregation bias and might not be appropriate for referenda studies

unique implementation of incentive contracts with many agents in this paper we consider the problem of implementation when a principal hires many agents and is not able to monitor their actions we distinguish two cases i when actions are mutually observable among agents ii when actions are not observable at all in i there is a mechanism in which the first best arises as a unique perfect equilibrium in ii we show by two examples that typically there are multiple equilibria if the principal merely offers a set of optimal sharing rules however we prove that the principal can use these optimal sharing rules as a starting point and construct a multi stage mechanism that has a unique second best perfect bayesian equilibrium

collusion delegation and supervision with soft information this paper derives an equivalence principle between organizational forms of supervisory and productive activities we consider an organization with an agent privately informed on his productivity and a risk averse supervisor getting signals on the agent s type in a centralized organization the principal can communicate and contract with both the supervisor and the agent however these two agents can collude against the principal in a decentralized organization the principal only communicates and contracts with the supervisor who in turn sub contracts with the agent we show that the two organizations achieve the same outcome we discuss this equivalence and provide various comparative statics results to assess the e ciency of supervisory structures

the theory of implementation when the planner is a player abstract in this paper we study a situation where the planner cannot commit to a mechanism and the outcome function is substituted by the planner herself we assume i agents have complete information and play simultaneously and ii given the messages announced by the agents the planner reacts in an optimal way given her beliefs this transforms the implementation problem into a signaling game we derive necessary and sufficient conditions for interactive implementation under different restrictions on the planner s out of equilibrium beliefs we compare our results to standard results on nash implementation journal of economic literatureclassification numbers c72 d71 d82

centralized and decentralized contracts in a moral hazard environment we study the optimal allocation of the contracting capacity in a moral hazard environment centralizing is superior when the principal is able to establish all the contracts with the agents simultaneously and she is able to monitor side contracting between the agents otherwise decentralizing can be a superior strategy we apply our results to a firm s decision on which outlets to franchise they suggest that franchising is more likely to occur the further the store is from headquarters the more isolated it is and in those activities where the risk is low this conclusion is consistent with empirical studies

internalizing team production externalities through delegation the british passenger rail sector as an example we show that in situations of team production the associated externality between workers can be partially internalized via the delegation of authority of contracting rights thus improving the overall efficiency of organizations a delegated structure provides further incentives to individuals in higher tiers of the hierarchy because it makes them residual claimants our model sheds light on recent debates about the organization of the british passenger rail sector

anniversary article a perspective on asymmetric information incentives and intrafirm resource allocation the paper asymmetric information incentives and intrafirm resource allocation by harris kriebel and raviv was published in the june 1982 issue ofmanagement science in this article written as part of this journal s 50 year anniversary celebration we highlight the significance of the harris et al paper for research in managerial accounting we first formulate and solve a continuous version of the harris et al model to illustrate the key assumptions and findings of their paper we then review several strands of the resource allocation literature in managerial accounting that have taken their inspiration either directly or indirectly from the work of harris et al

public preferences for carbon tax attributes the impacts of climate change are already visible throughout the world recognizing the threats posed by climate change the durban platform the 17th session of the conference of parties cop 17 underscores that the global nature of climate change calls for the widest possible cooperation and ambitious action by all countries a crucial starting point for the design of effective and publicly acceptable policies is to explore public preferences for climate policy instruments using a choice experiment this study investigates public preferences for carbon tax attributes in a developing country context the results account for heterogeneity in preferences and show that turkish people prefer a carbon tax with a progressive cost distribution rather than one with a regressive cost distribution the private cost has a negative effect on the probability of choosing the tax earmarking carbon tax revenues increases the public acceptability of the tax moreover there is a preference for a carbon tax that promotes public awareness of climate change

correlation and relative performance evaluation this paper reexamines the issue of relative versus joint incentive schemes in a multi agent moral hazard framework the model allows a full analysis of the information and dependence structure an important result is that the widespread notion that greater correlation in outcomes calls for more competition is not robust first when the dependence structure is effort sensitive the optimal incentive scheme in general mixes elements of relative evaluation and joint evaluation second under limited liability higher equilibrium correlation tends to make joint performance evaluation more desirable examples are provided regarding incentives in firms finance and innovation

decentralization and collusion abstract we consider a model where agents work in sequence on a project share information not available to the principal and can collude due to limited liability the coase theorem does not apply the distribution of surplus among the agents is therefore an important control variable for the principal which gives us a theory of how to delegate in an organization subject to moral hazard the optimal distribution of surplus can always be achieved by delegating in the right way decentralization without using message games journal of economic literature classification numbers d23 d82 l14 l22

collusion and biased tournaments abstract tournaments are vulnerable to collusion this paper finds that biased tournaments can be more effective at preventing collusion than unbiased ones when agents can collude to exert low effort introducing some bias into tournaments generates opposite effects on favored and disfavored agents respective incentives to exert high effort and provides strong incentives for the favored agent to deviate from collusion introducing an adequate degree of bias reduces the principal s incentive cost for preventing collusion however granting excessive bias instead increases the incentive cost we show that the optimal level of bias can be endogenously determined

making corruption harder asymmetric information collusion and crime we model criminal investigation as a principal agent monitor problem in which the agent can bribe the monitor to destroy evidence building on insights from laffont and martimort s 1997 paper we s

coalitions incentives and risk sharing abstract this paper analyzes the effects of coalitional behavior in principal multiagent relationships with moral hazard and identifies cases where the principal prefers agents to form a coalition via side contracting it is shown that the principal can implement given efforts via non individualistic incentive contracts at a lower cost when the agents can monitor each other s efforts perfectly and hence coordinate their effort choice than when the agents behave independently permitting the principal to utilize more complex communication mechanisms does not alter the result for there is no coalition proof revelation mechanism improving the principal s welfare journal of economic literature classification number d82

robustly collusion proof implementation a contract with multiple agents may be susceptible to collusion we show that agents collusion imposes no cost in a large class of circumstances with risk neutral agents including both uncorrelated and correlated types in those circumstances any payoff the principal can attain in the absence of collusion including the second best level can be attained in the presence of collusion in a way robust to many aspects of collusion behavior the collusion proof implementation generalizes to a setting in which only a subset of agents may collude provided that noncollusive agents incentives can be protected via an ex post incentive compatible and ex post individually rational mechanism our collusion proof implementation also sheds light on the extent to which hierarchical delegation of contracts can optimally respond to collusion