This essay revisits the economic theory of fiduciary law. Nearly two decades have passed since the publication of the seminal economic analyses of fiduciary law by Cooter and Freedman (1991), and by Easterbrook and Fischel (1993), which together have come to underpin the prevailing economic,...

Using a formal principal-agent model, I investigate the relation between monetary gift-exchange and incentive pay, while allowing for worker heterogeneity. I assume that some agents care more for their principal when they are convinced that the principal cares for them. Principals can signal...

Using a formal principal-agent model, I investigate the relation between monetary gift-exchange and incentive pay, while allowing for worker heterogeneity. I assume that some agents care more for their principal when they are convinced that the principal cares for them. Principals can signal...

The paper develops a model of academic tenure based on multi-tasking and screening. A professor has two tasks, researching and teaching. We assume that researching performance is easy to measure but teaching performance is immeasurable. Then Holmstrom and Milgrom's (1991) classical muli-task...

We analyze a multitasking model with a verifiable routine task and a skill-dependent activity characterized by moral hazard. Contracts negotiated by firm/employee pairs follow from Nash bargaining. High- and low-skilled employees specialize, intermediate productivity employees perform both...

Without sacrificing tractability, we analyze the effect of fat-tailed events such as catastrophes on the optimal compensation contract between a principal and an agent. The optimal contract depends on all the moments and not just the variance

Subjective performance evaluations are commonly used to provide feedback and incentives to workers. However, such evaluations can generate significant disagreements and conflicts, the severity of which may be driven by many factors. In this paper we show that a workers’ level of...

We introduce a dynamic principal-agent model to understand the nature of contracts between an employer and an independent gig worker. We model the worker’s self-respect with an endogenous participation constraint; he accepts a job offer if and only if its utility is at least as large as his...

I study a dynamic principal-agent problem where there are two routes of completinga project: directly attacking the project (a direct approach) or splitting the project intotwo subprojects (a sequential approach). The sequential approach allows the principalto better monitor the agent by...

We conduct a laboratory experiment with agents working on and principals benefiting from a real effort task in which the agents' effort/performance can only be evaluated subjectively. Principals give subjective performance feedback to agents and agents have an opportunity to sanction principals....