IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/eui/euiwps/eco2011-31.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Asymmetric Awareness and Moral Hazard

Author

Listed:
  • Sarah Auster

Abstract

This paper introduces asymmetric awareness into the classical principal-agent model and discusses the optimal contract between a fully aware principal and an unaware agent. The principal enlarges the agent’s awareness strategically when proposing the contract. He faces a trade off between participation and incentives. Leaving the agent unaware allows him to exploit the agent’s incomplete understanding of the world. Making the agent aware enables the principal to use the revealed contingencies as signals about the agent’s action choice. The optimal contract reveals contingencies that have low probability but are highly informative about the agent’s effort.

Suggested Citation

  • Sarah Auster, 2011. "Asymmetric Awareness and Moral Hazard," Economics Working Papers ECO2011/, European University Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:eui:euiwps:eco2011/31
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/19355/ECO_2011_31.pdf?sequence=1
    File Function: main text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nabil I. Al-Najjar & Luca Anderlini & Leonardo Felli, 2006. "Undescribable Events," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 73(4), pages 849-868.
    2. Luís Santos-Pinto, 2008. "Positive Self-image and Incentives in Organisations," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(531), pages 1315-1332, August.
    3. Heifetz, Aviad & Meier, Martin & Schipper, Burkhard C., 2013. "Unawareness, beliefs, and speculative trade," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 100-121.
    4. Oliver Board, 2008. "Object-Based Unawareness: Theory and Applications," Working Paper 378, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, revised Mar 2009.
    5. Grossman, Sanford J & Hart, Oliver D, 1983. "An Analysis of the Principal-Agent Problem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 51(1), pages 7-45, January.
    6. de la Rosa, Leonidas Enrique, 2011. "Overconfidence and moral hazard," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 429-451.
    7. Kim-Sau Chung & Oliver Board, 2007. "Object-Based Unawareness," Working Papers 2007-2, University of Minnesota, Department of Economics, revised 24 Aug 2007.
    8. Heifetz, Aviad & Meier, Martin & Schipper, Burkhard C., 2006. "Interactive unawareness," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 130(1), pages 78-94, September.
    9. Salvatore Modica & J.-Marc Tallon & Aldo Rustichini, 1998. "Unawareness and bankruptcy: A general equilibrium model," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 12(2), pages 259-292.
    10. Heifetz, Aviad & Meier, Martin & Schipper, Burkhard C., 2013. "Unawareness, beliefs, and speculative trade," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 100-121.
    11. Li, Jing, 2009. "Information structures with unawareness," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(3), pages 977-993, May.
    12. Eddie Dekel & Barton L. Lipman & Aldo Rustichini, 1998. "Standard State-Space Models Preclude Unawareness," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 66(1), pages 159-174, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Auster, Sarah, 2013. "Asymmetric awareness and moral hazard," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 503-521.
    2. Sarah Auster, 2012. "Asymmetric Awareness and Moral Hazard," Economics Working Papers ECO2012/23, European University Institute.
    3. Burkhard Schipper, 2013. "Awareness-dependent subjective expected utility," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 42(3), pages 725-753, August.
    4. Burkhard Schipper, 2010. "Revealed Unawareness," Working Papers 303, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    5. Spyros Galanis, 2013. "Unawareness of theorems," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 52(1), pages 41-73, January.
    6. Fiorini, Luciana C. & Rodrigues-Neto, José A., 2017. "Self-consistency, consistency and cycles in non-partitional knowledge models," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 11-21.
    7. Schipper, Burkhard C, 2011. "Preference-Based Unawareness," MPRA Paper 30221, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Ying-Ju Chen & Xiaojian Zhao, 2013. "Solution Concepts of Principal-Agent Models with Unawareness of Actions," Games, MDPI, vol. 4(3), pages 1-24, August.
    9. Karni, Edi & Vierø, Marie-Louise, 2017. "Awareness of unawareness: A theory of decision making in the face of ignorance," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 168(C), pages 301-328.
    10. Spyros Galanis, 2011. "Syntactic foundations for unawareness of theorems," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 71(4), pages 593-614, October.
    11. Heifetz, Aviad & Meier, Martin & Schipper, Burkhard C., 2013. "Unawareness, beliefs, and speculative trade," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 100-121.
    12. Heifetz, Aviad & Meier, Martin & Schipper, Burkhard C., 2013. "Unawareness, beliefs, and speculative trade," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 100-121.
    13. Burkhard Schipper, 2011. "Preference-Dependent Unawareness," Working Papers 269, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    14. Galanis, Spyros, 2007. "Unawareness of theorems," Discussion Paper Series In Economics And Econometrics 51816, Economics Division, School of Social Sciences, University of Southampton.
    15. Fukuda, Satoshi, 2021. "Unawareness without AU Introspection," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    16. Galanis, Spyros, 2018. "Speculation under unawareness," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 598-615.
    17. Schipper, Burkhard C, 2010. "Revealed Unawareness," MPRA Paper 21491, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Antoine Dubus, 2020. "Asymmetric awareness and heterogeneous agents," Rationality and Society, , vol. 32(4), pages 461-484, November.
    19. Oliver J. Board & Kim-Sau Chung, 2022. "Object-based unawareness: Theory and applications," The Journal of Mechanism and Institution Design, Society for the Promotion of Mechanism and Institution Design, University of York, vol. 7(1), pages 1-43, December.
    20. Zhao, Xiaojian, 2011. "Framing contingencies in contracts," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 31-40, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Unawareness; Moral Hazard; Incomplete Contracts.;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:eui:euiwps:eco2011/31. 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: Cécile Brière (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deiueit.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.