IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecm/wc2000/0749.html

Optimal Delegation

Author

Listed:
  • Dezso Szalay

    (University of Mannheim)

Abstract

How should a principal delegate a task to an agent? This paper studies the choice of an agent's discretion as a contracting problem. We show that the agent's freedom of action can be used as an effective incentive device: the agent's initiative is determined by the discretion he has in decision making. Due to this incentive effect the relationship between the severity of the conflict of principal's and agent's interests and the agent's optimal discretion in decision making is potentially non-monotonic: it may be optimal to curtail a subordinate's authority over decision making even if there are no conflicting interests concerning that decision. Our theory provides a rationale for commonly observed phenomena such as ''demanding clear statements'' from advisors or ''imposing an innovation bias'' on an organizational structure.

Suggested Citation

  • Dezso Szalay, 2000. "Optimal Delegation," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 0749, Econometric Society.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecm:wc2000:0749
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://fmwww.bc.edu/RePEc/es2000/0749.pdf
    File Function: main text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jean Tirole, 1999. "Incomplete Contracts: Where Do We Stand?," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 67(4), pages 741-782, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Andreas Roider, 2006. "Delegation of Authority as an Optimal (In)Complete Contract," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 162(3), pages 391-411, September.
    2. Krähmer, Daniel, 2002. "Delegation versus authority [Delegation versus Autorität]," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Market Processes and Governance FS IV 02-26, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.

    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. Stephanie Rosenkranz & Patrick W. Schmitz, 2007. "Can Coasean Bargaining Justify Pigouvian Taxation?," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 74(296), pages 573-585, November.
    2. Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci & Bruno Deffains, 2007. "Uncertainty of Law and the Legal Process," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 163(4), pages 627-656, December.
    3. Michiel Bijlsma & Wouter Elsenburg & Michiel van Leuvensteijn, 2010. "Four Futures for Finance; A scenario study," CPB Document 211.rdf, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    4. Philipp Sadowski, 2011. "Contingent Preference for Flexibility: Eliciting Beliefs from Behavior," Levine's Working Paper Archive 661465000000001189, David K. Levine.
    5. Seung-Hyun Lee & Kyeungrae Oh & Lorraine Eden, 2010. "Why Do Firms Bribe?," Management International Review, Springer, vol. 50(6), pages 775-796, December.
    6. Sharon Novak & Scott Stern, 2009. "Complementarity Among Vertical Integration Decisions: Evidence from Automobile Product Development," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 55(2), pages 311-332, February.
    7. Alessandro Ferrari & Lorenzo Pesaresi, 2025. "Specialization, Complexity & Resilience in Supply Chains," Papers 2509.08981, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2026.
    8. 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.
    9. Corgnet, Brice & Gächter, Simon & Hernán-González, Roberto, 2025. "The contractual dispute resolution game: Real-effort experiments on contract negotiation and arbitration," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 231(C).
    10. W. Bentley MacLeod, 1997. "Complexity, Contract and the Employment Relationship," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 342., Boston College Department of Economics.
    11. Patrick W. Schmitz, 2005. "Allocating Control in Agency Problems with Limited Liability and Sequential Hidden Actions," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 36(2), pages 318-336, Summer.
    12. Shachat, Jason & Walker, Matthew J. & Wei, Lijia, 2024. "Contingent payments in procurement interactions: Experimental evidence," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    13. Patrick W. Schmitz, 2006. "Information Gathering, Transaction Costs, and the Property Rights Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(1), pages 422-434, March.
    14. Valeria Gattai, 2013. "International outsourcing versus FDI under contractual incompleteness," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 60(2), pages 157-186, June.
    15. Gallus, Jana & Reiff, Joseph & Kamenica, Emir & Fiske, Alan Page, 2021. "Relational Incentives Theory," MPRA Paper 109898, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Samuel Bowles & Sandra Polania-Reyes, 2011. "Economic incentives and social preferences: substitutes or complements?," Department of Economics University of Siena 617, Department of Economics, University of Siena.
    17. Giovanni Dosi & Daniel A. Levinthal & Luigi Marengo, 2003. "Bridging contested terrain: linking incentive-based and learning perspectives on organizational evolution," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 12(2), pages 413-436, April.
    18. Cremer, Jacques & Khalil, Fahad, 1992. "Gathering Information before Signing a Contract," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(3), pages 566-578, June.
    19. Rossi, Enrico, 2020. "Reconsidering the dual nature of property rights: personal property and capital in the law and economics of property rights," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 105840, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    20. Trevon D. Logan & Manisha Shah, 2013. "Face Value: Information and Signaling in an Illegal Market," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 79(3), pages 529-564, January.

    More about this item

    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:wc2000:0749. 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.