Providing Incentives with Private Contracts

Research output: Conference Papers (RGC: 31A, 31B, 32, 33)32_Refereed conference paper (without host publication)peer-review

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Detail(s)

Original languageEnglish
Publication statusPublished - Jul 2022

Conference

Title2022 China International Conference in Finance (CICF)
LocationVirtual
PlaceChina
Period6 - 8 July 2022

Abstract

Agents working together to produce a joint output care about each other’s incentives. Because real world contracts are typically private information, observed only by their direct signatories, agents are vulnerable to the principal opportunistically reducing the power of other agents’ incentives. When agents are sufficiently skilled, the principal can mitigate this commitment problem by making the most skilled one “team-leader,” with authority to write other agents’ contracts. This endogenous hierarchy, never optimal with public contracts, raises effort, output, and compensation, but distorts effort allocation due to rent extraction. Our model applies to bank syndicates, venture capital, organizational design, and outsourcing.

Citation Format(s)

Providing Incentives with Private Contracts. / BUFFA, Andrea M.; LIU, Qing; WHITE, Lucy.
2022. Paper presented at 2022 China International Conference in Finance (CICF), China.

Research output: Conference Papers (RGC: 31A, 31B, 32, 33)32_Refereed conference paper (without host publication)peer-review