Limited-Liability and Incentive Contracting with Multiple Projects.

I examine a principal-agent model with multiple projects where a risk-neutral manager is protected by limited liability. The analysis has several interesting implications: (i) incentive problems are shown to be a natural source of economies of scope, as combining multiple projects under the management of a single manager relaxes the limited-liability constraint; (ii) as a result, managers may be overloaded with work and exert inefficiently high effort; and (iii) the analysis has implications for the optimal allocation of projects to different managers. Copyright 2001 by the RAND Corporation.