We present a dynamic contracting model in which the principal and agent disagree about the resolution of uncertainty, and we illustrate the contract design in an application with Bayesian learning. The disagreement creates gains from trade that the principal realizes by transferring payment to states that the agent considers relatively more likely, changing incentives. The interaction between incentive provision and learning creates an intertemporal source of "disagreement risk" that alters optimal risk sharing. There is an endogenous regime shift between economies with small and large belief differences, and an early shock to beliefs can lead to large persistent differences in variable pay even after beliefs have converged. Under risk-neutrality, "selling the firm" to the agent does not implement the first-best because it precludes state-contingent trades. The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org, Oxford University Press.
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Article provided by Oxford University Press for Society for Financial Studies in its journal The Review of Financial Studies.
Volume (Year): 22 (2009) Issue (Month): 10 (October) Pages: 3873-3906 Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Sendhil Mullainathan & Richard H. Thaler, 2000.
"Behavioral Economics,"
NBER Working Papers
7948, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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