IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aecrev/v106y2016i12p3660-99.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Breakthroughs, Deadlines, and Self-Reported Progress: Contracting for Multistage Projects

Author

Listed:
  • Brett Green
  • Curtis R. Taylor

Abstract

We study the optimal incentive scheme for a multistage project in which the agent privately observes intermediate progress. The optimal contract involves a soft deadline wherein the principal guarantees funding up to a certain date--if the agent reports progress at that date, then the principal gives him a relatively short hard deadline to complete the project--if progress is not reported at that date, then a probationary phase begins in which the project is randomly terminated at a constant rate until progress is reported. We explore several variants of the model with implications for optimal project design. In particular, we show that the principal benefits by imposing a small cost on the agent for submitting a progress report or by making the first stage of the project somewhat "harder" than the second.

Suggested Citation

  • Brett Green & Curtis R. Taylor, 2016. "Breakthroughs, Deadlines, and Self-Reported Progress: Contracting for Multistage Projects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(12), pages 3660-3699, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:106:y:2016:i:12:p:3660-99
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.20151181
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20151181
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrieve=oh4CES7UEWK2SAl7qHfHtjZ2wQQBKprS
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrieve=hjFAgjMRD4hSkdIl1_nLIU8uo7VjkS_0
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bruno Biais & Thomas Mariotti & Jean-Charles Rochet & StÈphane Villeneuve, 2010. "Large Risks, Limited Liability, and Dynamic Moral Hazard," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 78(1), pages 73-118, January.
    2. Zhang, Yuzhe, 2009. "Dynamic contracting with persistent shocks," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(2), pages 635-675, March.
    3. Bergemann, Dirk & Hege, Ulrich, 1998. "Venture capital financing, moral hazard, and learning," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 22(6-8), pages 703-735, August.
    4. Stephen E. Spear & Sanjay Srivastava, 1987. "On Repeated Moral Hazard with Discounting," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 54(4), pages 599-617.
    5. Shavell, Steven & Weiss, Laurence, 1979. "The Optimal Payment of Unemployment Insurance Benefits over Time," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 87(6), pages 1347-1362, December.
    6. Péter Eső & Balázs Szentes, 2007. "Optimal Information Disclosure in Auctions and the Handicap Auction," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 74(3), pages 705-731.
    7. PETER M. DeMARZO & YULIY SANNIKOV, 2006. "Optimal Security Design and Dynamic Capital Structure in a Continuous‐Time Agency Model," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(6), pages 2681-2724, December.
    8. Dirk Bergemann & Ulrigh Hege, 2005. "The Financing of Innovation: Learning and Stopping," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 36(4), pages 719-752, Winter.
    9. Tomasz Piskorski & Alexei Tchistyi, 2011. "Stochastic House Appreciation and Optimal Mortgage Lending," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(5), pages 1407-1446.
    10. William Fuchs, 2007. "Contracting with Repeated Moral Hazard and Private Evaluations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(4), pages 1432-1448, September.
    11. Robin Mason & Juuso Välimäki, 2015. "Getting It Done: Dynamic Incentives To Complete A Project," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 13(1), pages 62-97, February.
    12. Quadrini, Vincenzo, 2004. "Investment and liquidation in renegotiation-proof contracts with moral hazard," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(4), pages 713-751, May.
    13. Guo, Yingni & Hörner, Johannes, 2015. "Dynamic Mechanisms without Money," Economics Series 310, Institute for Advanced Studies.
    14. Fernandes, Ana & Phelan, Christopher, 2000. "A Recursive Formulation for Repeated Agency with History Dependence," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 91(2), pages 223-247, April.
    15. Holmstrom, Bengt & Milgrom, Paul, 1991. "Multitask Principal-Agent Analyses: Incentive Contracts, Asset Ownership, and Job Design," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 7(0), pages 24-52, Special I.
    16. Laux, Christian, 2001. "Limited-Liability and Incentive Contracting with Multiple Projects," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 32(3), pages 514-526, Autumn.
    17. Tracy R. Lewis, 2012. "A theory of delegated search for the best alternative," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 43(3), pages 391-416, September.
    18. Sofia Moroni, 2016. "Experimentation in Organizations," Working Paper 5876, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh.
    19. Dumas, Bernard, 1991. "Super contact and related optimality conditions," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 15(4), pages 675-685, October.
    20. Alessandro Pavan & Ilya Segal & Juuso Toikka, 2014. "Dynamic Mechanism Design: A Myersonian Approach," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 82(2), pages 601-653, March.
    21. Jean Tirole, 2006. "The Theory of Corporate Finance," Post-Print hal-00173191, HAL.
    22. Florian Hoffmann & Sebastian Pfeil, 2010. "Reward for Luck in a Dynamic Agency Model," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(9), pages 3329-3345.
    23. Steven D. Levitt & Christopher M. Snyder, 1997. "Is No. News Bad News? Information Transmission and the Role of "Early Warning" in the Principal-Agent Model," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 28(4), pages 641-661, Winter.
    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. Emeric Henry & Marco Loseto & Marco Ottaviani, 2022. "Regulation with Experimentation: Ex Ante Approval, Ex Post Withdrawal, and Liability," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(7), pages 5330-5347, July.
    2. Müller, Daniel & Schmitz, Patrick W., 2021. "The right to quit work: An efficiency rationale for restricting the freedom of contract," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 184(C), pages 653-669.
    3. Clara Graziano & Annalisa Luporini, 2022. "Do Firms Gain from Managerial Overconfidence? The Role of Severance Pay," CESifo Working Paper Series 9801, CESifo.
    4. Mayer, Simon, 2022. "Financing breakthroughs under failure risk," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(3), pages 807-848.
    5. Bhattacharjee, Swagata, 2022. "Dynamic contracting for innovation under ambiguity," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 534-552.
    6. Florian Hoffmann & Roman Inderst & Marcus Opp, 2021. "Only Time Will Tell: A Theory of Deferred Compensation [Motivating Innovation in Newly Public Firms]," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 88(3), pages 1253-1278.
    7. Liang, Yong & Sun, Peng & Tang, Runyu & Zhang, Chong, 2023. "Efficient resource allocation contracts to reduce adverse events," Other publications TiSEM 0bcf44d9-d0ac-4231-beaf-8, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    8. Emeric Henry & Marco Ottaviani, 2019. "Research and the Approval Process: The Organization of Persuasion," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(3), pages 911-955, March.
    9. Emeric Henry & Gianmarco Ottaviano, 2019. "Research and the Approval Process: the Organization of Persuasion," Sciences Po publications info:hdl:2441/1gr6n3t28b9, Sciences Po.
    10. Yair Antler & Daniel Bird & Santiago Oliveros, 2023. "Sequential Learning," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 15(1), pages 399-433, February.
    11. Shivam Gupta & Anupam Agrawal & Jennifer K. Ryan, 2023. "Agile contracting: Managing incentives under uncertain needs," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 32(3), pages 972-988, March.
    12. Rodivilov, Alexander, 2022. "Monitoring innovation," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 297-326.
    13. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/1gr6n3t28b94tafji6op8tlqs1 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Swagata Bhattacharjee, 2019. "Dynamic Contracting for Innovation Under Ambiguity," Working Papers 1022, Ashoka University, Department of Economics, revised Aug 2019.
    15. Feng Tian & Peng Sun & Izak Duenyas, 2021. "Optimal Contract for Machine Repair and Maintenance," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 69(3), pages 916-949, May.
    16. Elena M. Parilina & Georges Zaccour, 2017. "Node-Consistent Shapley Value for Games Played over Event Trees with Random Terminal Time," Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 175(1), pages 236-254, October.
    17. Sadler, Evan, 2021. "Dead ends," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).
    18. Foarta, Dana & Ting, Michael M., 2023. "Organizational capacity and project dynamics," Working Papers 339, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State.
    19. Gregorio Curello & Ludvig Sinander, 2020. "Screening for breakthroughs," Papers 2011.10090, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2024.
    20. Altan, Baṣak, 2019. "Dynamic moral hazard with sequential tasks," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 183(C), pages 1-1.
    21. Christoph Carnehl & Johannes Schneider, 2021. "On Risk and Time Pressure: When to Think and When to Do," Papers 2111.07451, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2022.
    22. Zhaolin Li & Steven Q. Lu & Jennifer K. Ryan & Daewon Sun, 2021. "Impact of Organizational Structure on Development Strategy under Equity‐Based Incentives," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 30(4), pages 984-996, April.
    23. Peng Sun & Feng Tian, 2018. "Optimal Contract to Induce Continued Effort," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(9), pages 4193-4217, September.
    24. Maxim Senkov, 2022. "Setting Interim Deadlines to Persuade," Papers 2210.08294, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2023.

    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. Mayer, Simon, 2022. "Financing breakthroughs under failure risk," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(3), pages 807-848.
    2. Xi Chen & Yu Chen & Xuhu Wan, 2018. "Delegated Project Search," Graz Economics Papers 2018-11, University of Graz, Department of Economics.
    3. Orlov, Dmitry, 2022. "Frequent monitoring in dynamic contracts," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 206(C).
    4. Garrett, Daniel F. & Pavan, Alessandro, 2015. "Dynamic managerial compensation: A variational approach," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 159(PB), pages 775-818.
    5. Golosov, M. & Tsyvinski, A. & Werquin, N., 2016. "Recursive Contracts and Endogenously Incomplete Markets," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 725-841, Elsevier.
    6. Szydlowski, Martin, 2019. "Incentives, project choice, and dynamic multitasking," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 14(3), July.
    7. Ronald Anderson & Cecilia Bustamante & Stéphane Guibaud & Mihail Zervos, 2018. "Agency, Firm Growth, and Managerial Turnover," Post-Print hal-03391936, HAL.
    8. Jianjun Miao & Alejandro Rivera, 2016. "Robust Contracts in Continuous Time," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 84, pages 1405-1440, July.
    9. Ronald Anderson & Cecilia Bustamante & Stéphane Guibaud & Mihail Zervos, 2018. "Agency, Firm Growth, and Managerial Turnover," Sciences Po publications info:hdl:2441/2iclr3ojhv9, Sciences Po.
    10. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/2iclr3ojhv9ko9ord4mpg9odaj is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Peng Sun & Feng Tian, 2018. "Optimal Contract to Induce Continued Effort," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(9), pages 4193-4217, September.
    12. Anderson, Ronald W. & Bustamante, Maria Cecilia & Guibaud, Stéphane & Zervos, Mihail, 2018. "Agency, firm growth, and managerial turnover," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 68784, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    13. Dylan Possamai & Nizar Touzi, 2020. "Is there a Golden Parachute in Sannikov's principal-agent problem?," Papers 2007.05529, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2022.
    14. Hendrik Hakenes & Friederike Schlegel, 2014. "I Spy with my Little Eye... a Banking Crisis - Early Warnings and Incentive Schemes in Banks," CESifo Working Paper Series 5140, CESifo.
    15. Miao, Jianjun & Zhang, Yuzhe, 2015. "A duality approach to continuous-time contracting problems with limited commitment," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 159(PB), pages 929-988.
    16. , & ,, 2012. "A principal-agent model of sequential testing," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 7(3), September.
    17. Katolnik, Svetlana & Schöndube, Jens Robert, 2014. "Don't Kill the Goose that Lays the Golden Eggs: Strategic Delay in Project Completion," Hannover Economic Papers (HEP) dp-533, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät.
    18. LiCalzi, Marco & Pavan, Alessandro, 2005. "Tilting the supply schedule to enhance competition in uniform-price auctions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 227-250, January.
    19. Patrick Bolton & Neng Wang & Jinqiang Yang, 2019. "Optimal Contracting, Corporate Finance, and Valuation with Inalienable Human Capital," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 74(3), pages 1363-1429, June.
    20. Michael R. Roberts, 2014. "The Role of Dynamic Renegotiation and Asymmetric Information in Financial Contracting," NBER Working Papers 20484, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    21. li, Hong & Mu, Congming & Yang, Jinqiang, 2016. "Optimal contract theory with time-inconsistent preferences," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 52(PB), pages 519-530.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D86 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Economics of Contract Law
    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill

    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:aea:aecrev:v:106:y:2016:i:12:p:3660-99. 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: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.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.