IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecm/ausm04/60.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Information Aggregation and Efficiency in Agency Contracts with Endogenous Externality

Author

Listed:
  • Shingo Ishiguro

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the principal-multi agent relationship with moral hazard where a risk neutral principal contracts with multiple risk averse agents whose actions are unobservable to the principal. We show that the well--known trade--off between incentive and risk sharing can be asymptotically resolved as the number of agents becomes sufficiently large, when an arbitrary fraction of agents can obtain unverifiable perfect signals about the actions of other agents. In particular the contract to attain the asymptotic efficiency has the following features: (i) The wage schemes to some agents are contingent on the task performances of other agents as well as their own performances even though all of them are technologically and statistically independent each other. (ii) The wage scheme specifies only two payment levels for each agent. (iii) The principal does not need to observe all the performances of agents. (iv) The almost first best is uniquely implemented.

Suggested Citation

  • Shingo Ishiguro, 2004. "Information Aggregation and Efficiency in Agency Contracts with Endogenous Externality," Econometric Society 2004 Australasian Meetings 60, Econometric Society.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecm:ausm04:60
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://repec.org/esAUSM04/up.30103.1076397375.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hermalin, Benjamin E & Katz, Michael L, 1991. "Moral Hazard and Verifiability: The Effects of Renegotiation in Agency," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(6), pages 1735-1753, November.
    2. J. A. Mirrlees, 1999. "The Theory of Moral Hazard and Unobservable Behaviour: Part I," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 66(1), pages 3-21.
    3. Bengt Holmstrom, 1982. "Moral Hazard in Teams," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 13(2), pages 324-340, Autumn.
    4. Grossman, Sanford J & Hart, Oliver D, 1983. "An Analysis of the Principal-Agent Problem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 51(1), pages 7-45, January.
    5. HOLMSTROM, Bengt, 1979. "Moral hazard and observability," LIDAM Reprints CORE 379, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    6. Matsushima, Hitoshi, 2001. "Multimarket Contact, Imperfect Monitoring, and Implicit Collusion," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 98(1), pages 158-178, May.
    7. Strausz, Roland, 1999. "Efficiency in Sequential Partnerships," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 85(1), pages 140-156, March.
    8. Shingo Ishiguro & Hideshi Itoh, 2001. "Moral Hazard and Renegotiation with Multiple Agents," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 68(1), pages 1-20.
    9. Ching-To Ma, 1988. "Unique Implementation of Incentive Contracts with Many Agents," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 55(4), pages 555-572.
    10. Bengt Holmstrom, 1979. "Moral Hazard and Observability," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 10(1), pages 74-91, Spring.
    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. Fleckinger, Pierre & Martimort, David & Roux, Nicolas, 2023. "Should They Compete or Should They Cooperate? The View of Agency Theory," TSE Working Papers 23-1421, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised Jan 2024.
    2. Fosco, C. & Mengel, F., 2008. "Incentives and informal networks," Research Memorandum 022, Maastricht University, Maastricht Research School of Economics of Technology and Organization (METEOR).
    3. Christopher S. Armstrong & David F. Larcker & Che-Lin Su, 2010. "Endogenous Selection and Moral Hazard in Compensation Contracts," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 58(4-part-2), pages 1090-1106, August.
    4. David E. M. Sappington, 1991. "Incentives in Principal-Agent Relationships," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 5(2), pages 45-66, Spring.
    5. Goergen, Marc & Manjon, Miguel C. & Renneboog, Luc, 2008. "Recent developments in German corporate governance," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 175-193, September.
    6. Nafziger, Julia, 2009. "Timing of information in agency problems with hidden actions," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(11), pages 751-766, December.
    7. Renee B. Adams & Benjamin E. Hermalin & Michael S. Weisbach, 2010. "The Role of Boards of Directors in Corporate Governance: A Conceptual Framework and Survey," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(1), pages 58-107, March.
    8. Ghossoub, Mario, 2010. "Supplement to "Belief heterogeneity in the Arrow-Borch-Raviv insurance model"," MPRA Paper 37717, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 22 Mar 2012.
    9. Mirman, Leonard J. & Santugini, Marc, 2013. "Firms, shareholders, and financial markets," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 53(2), pages 152-164.
    10. Benjamin E. Hermalin & Michael L. Katz, 1994. "Corporate Diversification and Agency," Industrial Organization 9402001, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 15 Nov 1996.
    11. Jenter, Dirk, 2004. "Executive Compensation, Incentives, and Risk," Working papers 4466-02, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan School of Management.
    12. Verbeck, Matthias, 2015. "Contracting with Researchers," VfS Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy 112963, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    13. Robert Gibbons, 2010. "Inside Organizations: Pricing, Politics, and Path Dependence," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 2(1), pages 337-365, September.
    14. Jokivuolle, Esa & Keppo, Jussi, 2014. "Bankers' compensation: Sprint swimming in short bonus pools?," Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers 2/2014, Bank of Finland.
    15. Oindrila Dey & Swapnendu Banerjee, 2022. "Incentives, Status and Thereafter: A Critical Survey," South Asian Journal of Macroeconomics and Public Finance, , vol. 11(1), pages 95-115, June.
    16. repec:bof:bofrdp:urn:nbn:fi:bof-201503041096 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. John Brehm & Scott Gates, 1994. "When Supervision Fails to Induce Compliance," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 6(3), pages 323-343, July.
    18. Damien S Eldridge, 2007. "A Shirking Theory of Referrals," Working Papers 2007.05, School of Economics, La Trobe University.
    19. Michael L. Katz, 2006. "Observable Contracts as Commitments: Interdependent Contracts and Moral Hazard," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(3), pages 685-706, September.
    20. Amin H. Amershi & Peter Cheng, 1988. "Implementable equilibria in accounting contexts: An exploratory study," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 4(2), pages 515-563, March.
    21. Quintero Jaramillo, Jose E., 2004. "Moral hazard in teams with limited punishments and multiple outputs," DEE - Working Papers. Business Economics. WB wb040705, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía de la Empresa.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Moral Hazard; Incentive Contracts; Principal-Agent Theory;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • M54 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Labor Management

    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:ecm:ausm04:60. 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: Christopher F. Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/essssea.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.