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Traditionally, researchers have had difficulty testing the relationship between the degree of risk or uncertainty in workers' environments and incentive pay. The authors employ Prendergast's (2002) theory that incorporates the delegation of worker authority into the principal-agent model to...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013137206
We analyze the effects of wage floors on optimal job design in a moral-hazard model with asymmetric tasks and imperfect aggregate performance measurement. Due to cost advantages of specialization, assigning the tasks to different agents is efficient. A sufficiently high wage floor, however,...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010339385
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10009273091
This paper studies how a three-layer hierarchical firm (principal-supervisor-agent) optimally creates effort norms for its employees. The key assumption is that effort norms are affected by the example of superiors. In equilibrium, norms are eroded as one moves down the hierarchy. The reason is...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013071829
The authors empirically test Prendergast’s (2002) theory that incorporates the delegation of worker authority into the principal-agent model to explain the lack of consistent empirical support for a tradeoff between risk and incentives. Using data from the 1998 British WERS, the authors...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014171756
In this paper I contrast the impact of precision, i.e., the level of accuracy with which workers' performance is assessed, on wage costs in U- and J-type tournaments. In U-type tournaments prizes are fixed. In J-type tournaments only an overall wage sum is specified. The principal can increase...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014065088
We analyze the effects of lower bounds on wages, e.g., minimum wages or liability limits, on job design within firms. In our model, two tasks contribute to non-veriable firm value and affect an imperfect performance measure. The tasks can be assigned to either one or two agents. In the absence...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10009125582
Employees often learn about their ability while working, and the resulting beliefs interact with pay incentives to shape employment outcomes. This paper investigates this issue within a model that incorporates learning about ability on the job, dynamic selection, effort, and variation in pay...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012972627
Given that an owner cannot commit to her timing strategy under a manager's hidden action, we consider (i) how the owner's timing decisions to launch a project and to replace the manager or change a project are determined, and (ii) how the optimal compensation contract for the manager is...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013067122
I study a career concerns model in which the principal receives information about the agent's performance from a possibly biased evaluator. The optimal bias solves the tradeoff between ex-post efficiency of the principal's decisions about the agent and incentive provision. It is "anti-agent"...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014137117