We examine optimal dynamic incentive contracts when adverse selection and moral hazard problems are present. We find that early success is optimally penalized in the sense that the agent who succeeds early subsequently faces a lower- powered incentive contract. Penalizing success in this manner serves to limit the agent's initial incentive to understate his ability.
Timeliness, Accuracy, and Relevance in Dynamic Incentive Contracts examines managerial performance measures from the perspective of timeliness, accuracy, and relevance in multi-period incentive problems. The authors use a simple linear framework where managerial actions do not affect risk and compare and contrast consumption risk for a manager's preferences with single and multiple consumption dates, respectively.Both full commitment to and renegotiation of long-term contracts are considered. Under full commitment, timely and accurate information is usually relevant and desirable; the only differences arise from the modeling of managerial preferences, through the manager's consumption risk. In particular, the timeliness of performance reports can be irrelevant; then, delaying reports is desirable if it can increase their accuracy. Under renegotiation of long-term contracts, the timeliness of information release relative to renegotiation is essential. Any information released prior to renegotiation is incorporated into an ex post efficient (renegotiated) contract and is particularly useful in insuring the manager against future consumption risk. Delayed reporting destroys this insurance value and can make late reports irrelevant, independent of the modeling of managerial preferences. But timely reports can create ex ante inefficient action incentives for managers, and then accuracy can be costly as well.
We analyze a long-term contracting problem involving common uncertainty about a parameter capturing the productivity of the relationship, and featuring a hidden action for the agent. We develop an approach that works for any utility function when the parameter and noise are normally distributed and when the effort and noise affect output additively. We then analytically solve for the optimal contract when the agent has exponential utility. We find that the Pareto frontier shifts out as information about the agent's quality improves. In the standard spot-market setup, by contrast, when the parameter measures the agent's 'quality', the Pareto frontier shifts inwards with better information. Commitment is therefore more valuable when quality is known more precisely. Incentives then are easier to provide because the agent has less room to manipulate the beliefs of the principal. Moreover, in contrast to results under one-period commitment, wage volatility declines as experience accumulates.
We analyze a long-term contracting problem involving common uncertainty about a parameter capturing the productivity of the relationship, and featuring a hidden action for the agent. We develop an approach that works for any utility function when the parameter and noise are normally distributed and when the effort and noise affect output additively. We then analytically solve for the optimal contract when the agent has exponential utility. We find that the Pareto frontier shifts out as information about the agent's quality improves. In the standard spot-market setup, by contrast, when the parameter measures the agent's 'quality', the Pareto frontier shifts inwards with better information. Commitment is therefore more valuable when quality is known more precisely. Incentives then are easier to provide because the agent has less room to manipulate the beliefs of the principal. Moreover, in contrast to results under one-period commitment, wage volatility declines as experience accumulates.
Excerpt from Effects of Incentive Contracts in Research and Development: A Preliminary Research Report In the past several years an effort has originated in the Defense Department (and followed by other government agencies) to discourage the use of cost-p1us=fixed fee (cpff) contracts and substitute contractual incentive arrangements. This effort supposedly relies upon the profit motive to reduce requirements for direct government control and to stim ulate better contractor performance and cost estimating. Incentive type contracts are not new in government contracting. Production contracts have been awarded on a fixed price basis for many years. The fixed price contract provides maximum correlation of contract profits with contract cost, and in theory might offer maximum cost incentive. How ever the use of incentive arrangements on r&d contracts is the novel feature of the dod (and nasa) programs of the past several years. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
I explicitly derive the optimal dynamic incentive contract in a general continuous time agency problem where inducing static first-best action is not always optimal. My framework generates two dynamic contracts new to the literature: (1) a q̀̀uiet-life" arrangement and (2) a suspension-based endogenously renegotiating contract. Both contractual forms induce a mixture of first-best and non-first-best action. These contracts capture common features in many real life arrangements such as ù̀p-or-out", partnership, tenure, hidden compensation and suspension clauses. In applications, I explore the effects of taxes, bargaining and renegotiation on optimal contracting. My technical work produces a new type of incentive scheme I call sticky incentives which underlies the optimal, infrequent-monitoring approach to inducing a mixture of first-best and non-first-best action. Furthermore, I show how differences in patience between the principal and agent factor into optimal contracting.
