IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mit/sloanp/4052.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Robust Incentive Contracts

Author

Listed:
  • Wernerfelt, Birger

Abstract

We look at a principal-agent model in which the agent has to perform an action, the difficulty of which is better known ex interim than ex ante. We compare two contracting regimes; one with commitment to an ex ante negotiated contract, and one with an ex interim negotiated contract. The ex ante contract can not be too steep, but attempts to negotiate a steeper ex interim contract may result in bargaining failure. We find that the relative efficiency of the two contracting regimes depends on the nature of the differences between tasks. In a dynamic version of the analysis, we further find that the comparison depends on the frequency with which new tasks are needed. The argument can be interpreted as an analysis of the tradeoff between weak incentives in the firm and the possibility of unsuccessful negotiations in the market

Suggested Citation

  • Wernerfelt, Birger, 2004. "Robust Incentive Contracts," Working papers 4448-03, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan School of Management.
    • Handle: RePEc:mit:sloanp:4052
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/4052
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fudenberg, Drew & Holmstrom, Bengt & Milgrom, Paul, 1990. "Short-term contracts and long-term agency relationships," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 1-31, June.
    2. Bajari, Patrick & Tadelis, Steven, 2001. "Incentives versus Transaction Costs: A Theory of Procurement Contracts," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 32(3), pages 387-407, Autumn.
    3. Jonathan Levin, 2003. "Relational Incentive Contracts," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(3), pages 835-857, June.
    4. Duncan Simester & Marc Knez, 2002. "Direct and Indirect Bargaining Costs and the Scope of the Firm," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 75(2), pages 283-304, April.
    5. Steven Tadelis, 2002. "Complexity, Flexibility, and the Make-or-Buy Decision," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(2), pages 433-437, May.
    6. Myerson, Roger B. & Satterthwaite, Mark A., 1983. "Efficient mechanisms for bilateral trading," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 265-281, April.
    7. Birger Wernerfelt, 2002. "Why Should the Boss Own the Assets?," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 11(3), pages 473-485, September.
    8. Wernerfelt, Birger, 1997. "On the Nature and Scope of the Firm: An Adjustment-Cost Theory," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 70(4), pages 489-514, October.
    9. Holmstrom, Bengt & Milgrom, Paul, 1987. "Aggregation and Linearity in the Provision of Intertemporal Incentives," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(2), pages 303-328, March.
    10. Holmstrom, Bengt & Milgrom, Paul, 1994. "The Firm as an Incentive System," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(4), pages 972-991, September.
    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. Birger Wernerfelt, 2013. "Small forces and large firms: Foundations of the RBV," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(6), pages 635-643, June.

    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. Wernerfelt, Birger, 2003. "Governance of Adjustments," Working papers 4412-03, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan School of Management.
    2. Gibbons, Robert, 2005. "Four forma(lizable) theories of the firm?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 200-245, October.
    3. Pierre Azoulay, 2004. "Capturing Knowledge within and across Firm Boundaries: Evidence from Clinical Development," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1591-1612, December.
    4. W. Bentley MacLeod, 2006. "Reputations, Relationships and the Enforcement of Incomplete Contracts," CESifo Working Paper Series 1730, CESifo.
    5. Birger Wernerfelt, 2013. "Small forces and large firms: Foundations of the RBV," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(6), pages 635-643, June.
    6. Wernerfelt, Birger, 2003. "Indirect Adjustment-Costs Under Alternative Coordination Regimes," Working papers 4336-01, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan School of Management.
    7. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2373-2437 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Andersson Fredrik, 2011. "Make-or-Buy Decisions and the Manipulability of Performance Measures," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 11(1), pages 1-30, December.
    9. Alessandro De Chiara, 2018. "Courts' Decisions, Cooperative Investments, and Incomplete Contracts," CEU Working Papers 2018_5, Department of Economics, Central European University.
    10. Christian Zehnder & Holger Herz & Jean-Philippe Bonardi, 2016. "A Productive Clash of Cultures: Injecting Economics into Leadership Research," CESifo Working Paper Series 6175, CESifo.
    11. Pierre Azoulay, 2003. "Acquiring Knowledge Within and Across Firm Boundaries: Evidence from Clinical Development," NBER Working Papers 10083, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Birger Wernerfelt, 2002. "Why Should the Boss Own the Assets?," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 11(3), pages 473-485, September.
    13. Nagaoka, Sadao & Takeishi, Akira & Noro, Yoshihisa, 2008. "Determinants of firm boundaries: Empirical analysis of the Japanese auto industry from 1984 to 2002," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 187-206, June.
    14. Birger Wernerfelt, 2007. "Renegotiation Facilitates Contractual Incompleteness," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(4), pages 893-910, December.
    15. Francine Lafontaine & Margaret Slade, 2007. "Vertical Integration and Firm Boundaries: The Evidence," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 45(3), pages 629-685, September.
    16. Andersson, Fredrik, 2004. "A Trickle-Down Theory of Incentives with Applications to Privatization and Outsourcing," Working Papers 2004:13, Lund University, Department of Economics.
    17. Thierry Granger, 1997. "Le renouveau de la théorie des organisations. Lecture critique de trois ouvrages récents," Revue Économique, Programme National Persée, vol. 48(1), pages 147-180.
    18. Robert Gibbons, 2005. "Incentives Between Firms (and Within)," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 51(1), pages 2-17, January.
    19. Dessein, Wouter, 2012. "Incomplete Contracts and Firm Boundaries: New Directions," CEPR Discussion Papers 9019, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    20. Corts, Kenneth S., 2006. "The interaction of task and asset allocation," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 24(5), pages 887-906, September.
    21. Thomas F. Hellmann & Veikko Thiele, 2012. "A Theory of the Firm based on Partner Displacement," NBER Working Papers 18495, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    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:mit:sloanp:4052. 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: None (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ssmitus.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.