IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/the/publsh/4231.html

Equilibrium contracts and boundedly rational expectations

Author

Listed:
  • Schumacher, Heiner

    (Department of Economics, KU Leuven)

  • Thysen, Heidi Christina

    (Department of Economics, London School of Economics)

Abstract

We study a principal-agent framework in which the agent forms beliefs about the principal's project based on a misspecified subjective model. She fits this model to the objective probability distribution to predict output under alternative actions. Misspecifications in the subjective model may lead to biased beliefs. However, under mild restrictions, the agent has correct beliefs on the equilibrium path so that the optimal contract is non-exploitative. This allows for a behavioral version of the informativeness principle: The optimal contract conditions on an additional variable only if it is informative about the action according to the agent's subjective model. We further characterize when misspecifications affect the optimal contract. One implication of this characterization is that the scope for belief biases depends on the agent's job, e.g., her position in the hierarchy.

Suggested Citation

  • Schumacher, Heiner & Thysen, Heidi Christina, 2022. "Equilibrium contracts and boundedly rational expectations," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 17(1), January.
    • Handle: RePEc:the:publsh:4231
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://econtheory.org/ojs/index.php/te/article/viewFile/20220371/33010/962
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Spiegler, Ran, 2022. "On the behavioral consequences of reverse causality," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    2. Kai Barron & Tilman Fries, 2023. "Narrative Persuasion," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 469, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    3. Andreas Hefti & Shuo Liu & Armin Schmutzler, 2022. "Preferences, Confusion and Competition," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 132(645), pages 1852-1881.
    4. Canidio, Andrea & Karle, Heiko, 2022. "The focusing effect in negotiations," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 197(C), pages 1-20.
    5. Matthias Fahn & Nicolas Klein, 2023. "Non-Common Priors, Incentives, and Promotions: The Role of Learning," Economics working papers 2023-06, Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    6. de la Rosa, Leonidas Enrique & Lambertsen, Nikolaj Niebuhr, 2025. "Overconfidence and moral hazard without commitment," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    7. Gui, Zhengqing & Huang, Yangguang & Zhao, Xiaojian, 2024. "Financial fraud and investor awareness," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 219(C), pages 104-123.
    8. Carbajal, Juan Carlos & Nachbar, John, 2025. "Robust personal equilibrium effects in misspecified causal models," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D86 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Economics of Contract Law

    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:the:publsh:4231. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Editor Theoretical Economics The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask Editor Theoretical Economics to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://econtheory.org .

    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.