We experimentally test whether intentional and observable discriminatorypay of symmetric agents in the Winter (2004) game causes lowpaid agents to reduce effort. We control for intentionality of wages byeither allowing a principal to determine wages or by implementing arandom process. Our main...

We provide a condition for ranking of information systems in agencyproblems. The condition has a straightforward economic interpretation in terms of the sensitivity of a cumulative distribution with respect to the agents effort. The criterion is shown to be equivalent to the mean preserving...

We introduce bargaining power in a moral hazard framework whereparties are risk-neutral and the agent is ¯nancially constrained. Weshow that the same contract emerges if the concept of bargaining poweris analyzed in either of the following three frameworks; a standard P-Aframework by varying...

Consider a principal-agent relationship in which more eort by the agent raises thelikelihood of success. Does rewarding success, i.e., paying a bonus, increase eort inthis case? I nd that bonuses have not only an incentive but also an income eect.Overall, bonuses paid for success may well reduce...

I compare an auction and a tournament in a procurement setting where a noncontractible signal about the quality that each firm is able to supply is observed by the procurer and all competing firms. Signals are affected by firms noncontractibleinvestments in R&D and the procurers precision of...

Does gender play a role in the context of team work? Our results based on areal-effort experiment suggest that performance depends on the composition of theteam. We find that female and male performance di¤er most in mixed teams withrevenue sharing between the team members, as men put in...