IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_10481.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Non-Common Priors, Incentives, and Promotions: The Role of Learning

Author

Listed:
  • Matthias Fahn
  • Nicolas Klein

Abstract

We analyze a repeated principal-agent setting in which the principal cares about the agent’s verifiable effort as well as an extra profit that can be generated only if the agent is talented. The agent is overconfident about his talent and updates beliefs using Bayes’ rule. An exploitation contract in which the agent is only compensated for his effort if the extra profit materializes maximizes the principal’s profits. In this optimal contract, the agent's principal-expected compensation decreases over time and learning exacerbates his exploitation, unless he has been revealed to be talented. Therefore, the principal’s profits may increase with failures, and the agent may only be employed if his perceived talent is sufficiently low. As an application of these results, we analyse a firm’s optimal promotion policy, and show that promotion to a new job may optimally be based on the agent being successful in a previous job, even if the agent's talent across jobs is entirely uncorrelated. This provides a novel explanation for the so-called “Peter Principle”, for which Benson et al., 2019 have recently provided evidence in a setting with verifiable performance and highly confident workers.

Suggested Citation

  • Matthias Fahn & Nicolas Klein, 2023. "Non-Common Priors, Incentives, and Promotions: The Role of Learning," CESifo Working Paper Series 10481, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10481
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp10481.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Schumacher, Heiner & Thysen, Heidi Christina, 2022. "Equilibrium contracts and boundedly rational expectations," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 17(1), January.
    2. Paul Heidhues & Botond Koszegi, 2010. "Exploiting Naivete about Self-Control in the Credit Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(5), pages 2279-2303, December.
    3. Alexander K. Koch & Julia Nafziger, 2012. "Job Assignments under Moral Hazard: The Peter Principle Revisited," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(4), pages 1029-1059, December.
    4. Anja Sautmann, 2013. "Contracts for Agents with Biased Beliefs: Some Theory and an Experiment," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(3), pages 124-156, August.
    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. Wenner, Lukas M., 2018. "Do sellers exploit biased beliefs of buyers? An experiment," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 194-215.
    2. Anja Schöttner & Veikko Thiele, 2010. "Promotion Tournaments and Individual Performance Pay," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(3), pages 699-731, September.
    3. Laureti, Carolina & Szafarz, Ariane, 2023. "Banking regulation and costless commitment contracts for time-inconsistent agents," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    4. Markus Haavio & Kaisa Kotakorpi, 2012. "Sin Licenses Revisited," CESifo Working Paper Series 4010, CESifo.
    5. Cirillo, Valeria & Rinaldini, Matteo & Staccioli, Jacopo & Virgillito, Maria Enrica, 2018. "Workers’ awareness context in Italian 4.0 factories," GLO Discussion Paper Series 240, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    6. Marieke Bos & Chloé Le Coq & Peter van Santen, 2022. "Scarcity and consumers’ credit choices," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 92(1), pages 105-139, February.
    7. Lukas, Moritz & Nöth, Markus, 2022. "Voluntary minimum repayments and borrower heterogeneity: Evidence from revolving consumer credit," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    8. Anett John, 2020. "When Commitment Fails: Evidence from a Field Experiment," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(2), pages 503-529, February.
    9. Woźny, Łukasz, 2015. "On incentives, temptation and self-control," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 60-67.
    10. Oren Bar-Gill, 2015. "Price Caps in Multiprice Markets," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 44(2), pages 453-476.
    11. Murooka, Takeshi & Schwarz, Marco A., 2019. "Consumer exploitation and notice periods," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 89-92.
    12. Steffen Altmann & Armin Falk & Paul Heidhues & Rajshri Jayaraman & Marrit Teirlinck, 2019. "Defaults and Donations: Evidence from a Field Experiment," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 101(5), pages 808-826, December.
    13. Boris Knapp, 2021. "Fake Reviews and Naive Consumers," Vienna Economics Papers 2102, University of Vienna, Department of Economics.
    14. Christensen, Else Gry Bro & Nafziger, Julia, 2016. "Packaging of sin goods – Commitment or exploitation?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 62-74.
    15. Justin Downs, 2021. "Information gathering by overconfident agents," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(3), pages 554-568, August.
    16. Jong-Hee Hahn & Jinwoo Kim & Sang-Hyun Kim & Jihong Lee, 2018. "Price discrimination with loss averse consumers," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 65(3), pages 681-728, May.
    17. Jing Ai & Lin Zhao & Wei Zhu, 2016. "Contracting with Present-Biased Consumers in Insurance Markets," The Geneva Risk and Insurance Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Association for the Study of Insurance Economics (The Geneva Association), vol. 41(2), pages 107-148, September.
    18. Nicola Lacetera & Claudio A. Piga & Lorenzo Zirulia, 2021. "Sticky Price for Declining Risk? Business Strategies with “Behavioral” Customers in the Hotel Industry," NBER Working Papers 28456, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Liang Guo, 2023. "The Mnemonomics of Contractual Screening," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(3), pages 1739-1757, March.
    20. D׳Agostino, Elena & Seidmann, Daniel J., 2016. "Protecting buyers from fine print," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 42-54.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    overconfidence; experimentation; dynamic incentives; Peter Principle;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C73 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Stochastic and Dynamic Games; Evolutionary Games
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • D86 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Economics of Contract Law
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • M51 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Firm Employment Decisions; Promotions

    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:ces:ceswps:_10481. 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: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.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.