Should principals explain and justify their evaluations? Suppose the principal's evaluation is private information, but she can provide justication by sending a costly cheap-talk message. If she does not provide justication, her message space is restricted, but the message is costless. I show...

This paper studies non-contractibility of a contract designer's actions in an agency model with costly monitoring. It shows that non-contractibility may lead to an explicit randomness, which is not optimal under full contractibility. The randomness mitigates non-contractibility. Its...