Screening talent to appropriately assign tasks among agents is an important organizational decision. In this paper, we compare the efficacies of absolute and relative performance evaluation systems in identifying agent talent when information asymmetry is present. We identify conditions under...

We analyze a principal-agent setting with multiple sources of contracting information in which the signal from each source can be unmistakably interpreted as "good" or "bad" news. We then ask whether it is best to condition the acquisition of one of the information sources on whether the earlier...