Competing mechanism games of moral hazard: communication and robustness

We consider multiple-principal multiple-agent models of moral hazard: principals compete through mechanisms in the presence of agents who take unobservable actions. In this context, we provide a rationale for restricting principals to make use of simple mechanisms, which correspond to direct mechanisms in the standard framework of Myerson (J Math Econ 10:67–81, <CitationRef CitationID="CR12">1982</CitationRef>). Our results complement those of Han (J Econ Theory 137(1):610–626, <CitationRef CitationID="CR8">2007</CitationRef>) who analyzes a complete information setting where agents’ actions are fully contractible. Copyright Springer-Verlag 2012