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Inducing Leaders to Take Risky Decisions: Dismissal, Tenure, and Term Limits

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  • Philippe Aghion
  • Matthew O. Jackson

Abstract

How can a principal (employer or voter) induce an agent (worker or politician) to choose the "right" actions if risky actions reveal the agent's decision making competence and only dismissal can be used as an incentive instrument? We first show that if the principal can commit to a replacement strategy, then optimal mechanisms involve either (i) a probationary period and then indefinite tenure, or (ii) dismissing poorly performing agents but also randomly replacing agents who take nonrevealing actions. When the principal cannot commit, incentives can be improved by imposing term limits on agents.

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  • Philippe Aghion & Matthew O. Jackson, 2016. "Inducing Leaders to Take Risky Decisions: Dismissal, Tenure, and Term Limits," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 8(3), pages 1-38, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aejmic:v:8:y:2016:i:3:p:1-38
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/mic.20150083
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    Cited by:

    1. Rahul Deb & Mallesh M. Pai & Maher Said, 2018. "Evaluating Strategic Forecasters," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(10), pages 3057-3103, October.
    2. Pavesi, Filippo & Scotti, Massimo, 2022. "Good lies," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
      • Filippo Pavesi & Massimo Scotti, 2019. "Good Lies," Working Paper Series 39, Economics Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney.
    3. Fausto Panunzi & Nicola Pavoni & Guido Tabellini, 2020. "Economic Shocks and Populism: The Political Implications of Reference-Dependent Preferences," CESifo Working Paper Series 8539, CESifo.
    4. Volker Laux, 2017. "Supporting and Assessing Agents," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(4), pages 995-1016, September.
    5. Marina Halac & Ilan Kremer, 2020. "Experimenting with Career Concerns," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 12(1), pages 260-288, February.
    6. Benjamin Davies, 2022. "Why do experts give simple advice?," Papers 2209.11710, arXiv.org.
    7. Rahul Deb & Matthew Mitchell & Mallesh Pai, 2019. "Our distrust is very expensive," Working Papers tecipa-632, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    8. Timothy Perri, 2018. "Economics of evaluation (with special reference to promotion and tenure committees)," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 19(1), pages 1-19, February.
    9. Yamasaki, Junichi, 2020. "Time horizon of government and public goods investment: Evidence from Japan," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    10. Deb, Rahul & Mitchell, Matthew & Pai, Mallesh M., 2022. "(Bad) reputation in relational contracting," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 17(2), May.
    11. Kim, Doyoung, 2017. "Motivating for new changes when agents have reputation concerns," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 37-53.
    12. Raphael Boleslavsky, 2023. "Waiting for Fake News," Papers 2304.04053, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2023.
    13. Schottmüller, Christoph, 2019. "Too good to be truthful: Why competent advisers are fired," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 181(C), pages 333-360.
    14. Scott C. Ganz, 2020. "Hyperopic Search: Organizations Learning About Managers Learning About Strategies," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 31(4), pages 821-838, July.
    15. Rohan DUTTA & Pierre-Yves YANNI, 2017. "On Inducing Agents with Term Limits to Take Appropriate Risk," Cahiers de recherche 06-2017, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
    16. Mehmet Ekmekci & Leandro Gorno & Lucas Maestri & Jian Sun & Dong Wei, 2022. "Learning from Manipulable Signals," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 112(12), pages 3995-4040, December.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • M51 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Firm Employment Decisions; Promotions

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