This paper studies optimal executive pay when the CEO is concerned about fairness: if his wage falls below a perceived fair share of output, the CEO suffers disutility that is increasing in the discrepancy. Fairness concerns do not lead to fair wages always being paid -- to induce effort, the...

We study a principal-agent model with moral hazard and adverse selection. Risk-neutral agents with limited liability have arbitrary private information about the distribution of outputs and the cost of effort. We show that under a multiplicative separability condition, the optimal mechanism...

This paper studies the value of more precise signals on agent performance in an optimal contracting model with endogenous effort. With limited liability, the agent's wage is increasing in output only if output exceeds a threshold, else it is zero regardless of output. If the threshold is...

We study a principal-agent model with both moral hazard and adverse selection. Risk-neutral agents with limited liability have arbitrary private information about the distribution of outputs and the cost of effort. We obtain conditions under which the optimal mechanism offers a single contract...

This paper shows that the informativeness principle, as originally formulated by Holmstrom (1979), does not hold if the first-order approach is invalid. We introduce a "generalized informativeness principle" that takes into account non-local incentive constraints and holds generically, even...

This paper shows that the informativeness principle does not automatically extend to settings with limited liability. Even if a signal is informative about effort, it may have no value for contracting. An agent with limited liability is paid zero for certain output realizations. Thus, even if...