IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/adr/anecst/y1990i18p131-149.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Sélection adverse et aversion pour le risque

Author

Listed:
  • Bernard Salanié

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to study a simple example of an adverse selection problem in a Principal-Agent relationship, where uncertainty is not resolved at the time the contract is signed. It is shown that the agent's risk-aversion then plays a critical role in determining the shape of the optimal contract; more precisely, a bunching phenomenon will occur for large (but finite) values of the agent's absolute index of risk-aversion. Since this phenomenon is absent in the two extreme cases of zero or infinite risk-aversion, it is argued that one would miss important points in focussing on these (simpler) cases, as is usually done.

Suggested Citation

  • Bernard Salanié, 1990. "Sélection adverse et aversion pour le risque," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 18, pages 131-149.
  • Handle: RePEc:adr:anecst:y:1990:i:18:p:131-149
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20075789
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Guesnerie, Roger & Laffont, Jean-Jacques, 1984. "A complete solution to a class of principal-agent problems with an application to the control of a self-managed firm," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 329-369, December.
    2. Mirrlees, J. A., 1976. "Optimal tax theory : A synthesis," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(4), pages 327-358, November.
    3. Steven Shavell, 1979. "Risk Sharing and Incentives in the Principal and Agent Relationship," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 10(1), pages 55-73, Spring.
    4. Lollivier, Stefan & Rochet, Jean-Charles, 1983. "Bunching and second-order conditions: A note on optimal tax theory," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 392-400, December.
    5. repec:adr:anecst:y:1988:i:12:p:02 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jaeyoung Sung, 2005. "Optimal Contracts Under Adverse Selection and Moral Hazard: A Continuous-Time Approach," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 18(3), pages 1021-1073.
    2. Fleurbaey, Marc & Gary-Bobo, Robert J. & Maguain, Denis, 2002. "Education, distributive justice, and adverse selection," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(1), pages 113-150, April.
    3. Nicolás Hernández Santibáñez & Dylan Possamaï & Chao Zhou, 2020. "Bank monitoring incentives under moral hazard and adverse selection," Post-Print hal-01435460, HAL.
    4. Lømo, Teis Lunde, 2015. "Risk sharing mitigates opportunism in vertical contracting," Working Papers in Economics 10/15, University of Bergen, Department of Economics.
    5. Laffont, Jean-Jacques & Rochet, Jean-Charles, 1998. "Regulation of a Risk Averse Firm," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 149-173, November.
    6. Pierre Martinon & Pierre Picard & Anasuya Raj, 2018. "On the design of optimal health insurance contracts under ex post moral hazard," The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance Theory, Springer;International Association for the Study of Insurance Economics (The Geneva Association), vol. 43(2), pages 137-185, September.
    7. Nicolás Hernández Santibáñez & Dylan Possamaï & Chao Zhou, 2020. "Bank Monitoring Incentives Under Moral Hazard and Adverse Selection," Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 184(3), pages 988-1035, March.
    8. El Bouhadi, Abdelhamid, 2006. "Contrat de travail et précarisation : une modélisation de l’information asymétrique d’une situation atypique, cas des pays pauvres et en développement [Employment contract and insecurity jobs: asym," MPRA Paper 19859, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Basov Suren & Yin Xiangkang, 2010. "Optimal Screening by Risk-Averse Principals," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 10(1), pages 1-25, March.
    10. Pierre Martinon & Pierre Picard & Anasuya Raj, 2017. "On the Design of Optimal Health Insurance Contracts under Ex Post Moral Hazard," Working Papers hal-01348551, HAL.
    11. Chifeng Dai, 2008. "Regulating a risk-averse firm under incomplete information," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 34(1), pages 75-85, August.
    12. Chifeng Dai, 2022. "Optimal risk sharing with ex post private information: Rules versus discretion," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 89(1), pages 160-184, July.
    13. Bontems, Philippe & Thomas, Alban, 2001. "Optimal Regulation Under Asymmetric Information And Risk Aversion With An Application To Pollution Control," 2001 Annual meeting, August 5-8, Chicago, IL 20727, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Konishi, Hideo, 1995. "A Pareto-improving commodity tax reform under a smooth nonlinear income tax," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(3), pages 413-446, March.
    2. Zou, Liang, 1992. "Threat-based incentive mechanisms under moral hazard and adverse selection," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 47-74, March.
    3. Brett, Craig & Weymark, John A., 2016. "Voting over selfishly optimal nonlinear income tax schedules with a minimum-utility constraint," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 18-31.
    4. Massimo Morelli & Huanxing Yang & Lixin Ye, 2012. "Competitive Nonlinear Taxation and Constitutional Choice," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 4(1), pages 142-175, February.
    5. Laurence Jacquet & Etienne Lehmann, 2021. "Optimal Income Taxation with Composition Effects," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 19(2), pages 1299-1341.
    6. Ludvig Sinander, 2019. "The converse envelope theorem," Papers 1909.11219, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2022.
    7. Ruiz del Portal, X., 2009. "A general principal-agent setting with non-differentiable mechanisms: Some examples," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 57(2), pages 262-278, March.
    8. Boone, Jan & Bovenberg, Lans, 2004. "The optimal taxation of unskilled labor with job search and social assistance," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(11), pages 2227-2258, September.
    9. Berliant, M. & Gouveia, M., 1991. "On Political Economy of Income Taxation," RCER Working Papers 288, University of Rochester - Center for Economic Research (RCER).
    10. Lehmann, Etienne & Parmentier, Alexis & Van Der Linden, Bruno, 2011. "Optimal income taxation with endogenous participation and search unemployment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(11), pages 1523-1537.
    11. Morten Nyborg Støstad & Frank Cowell, 2021. "Inequality as an Externality: Consequences for Tax Design," PSE Working Papers halshs-03495989, HAL.
    12. Boadway, Robin & Jacquet, Laurence, 2008. "Optimal marginal and average income taxation under maximin," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 143(1), pages 425-441, November.
    13. Dan Cao & Roger Lagunoff, 2016. "The Design of Optimal Collateralized Contracts," Working Papers gueconwpa~16-16-01, Georgetown University, Department of Economics, revised 01 Jun 2017.
    14. Craig Brett & John A. Weymark, 2008. "Public Good Provision And The Comparative Statics Of Optimal Nonlinear Income Taxation," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 49(1), pages 255-290, February.
    15. Hellwig, Martin F., 2007. "A contribution to the theory of optimal utilitarian income taxation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(7-8), pages 1449-1477, August.
    16. Berliant, M. & Gouveia, M., 1990. "Incentive Compatible Income Taxation, Individual Revenue Requirements And Welfare," RCER Working Papers 234, University of Rochester - Center for Economic Research (RCER).
    17. Martin Hellwig, 2008. "A Maximum Principle for Control Problems with Monotonicity Constraints," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2008_04, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    18. X. Ruiz del Portal, 2012. "Conditions for incentive compatibility in models with multidimensional allocation functions and one-dimensional types," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 16(4), pages 311-321, December.
    19. Jan Boone & Lans Bovenberg, 2007. "The Simple Economics of Bunching: Optimal Taxation with Quasi‐Linear Preferences," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 9(1), pages 89-105, February.
    20. repec:dau:papers:123456789/2317 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Martin Hellwig, 2010. "Utilitarian mechanism design for an excludable public good," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 44(3), pages 361-397, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:adr:anecst:y:1990:i:18:p:131-149. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Secretariat General or Laurent Linnemer (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ensaefr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.