IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/6875.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Managerial Incentive Problems: A Dynamic Perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Bengt Holmstrom

Abstract

The paper studies how a person's concern for a future career may influence his or her incentives to put in effort or make decisions on the job. In the model, the person's productive abilities are revealed over time through observations of performance. There are no explicit output contingent contracts, but since the wage in each period is based on expected output and expected output depends on assessed ability, an implicit contact' links today's performance to future wages. An incentive problem arises from the person's ability and desire to influence the learning process, and therefore the wage process, by taking unobserved actions that affect today's performance. The fundamental incongruity in preferences is between the individual's concern for human capital returns and the firm's concern for financial returns. The two need to be only weakly related. It is shown that career motives can be beneficial as well as detrimental, depending on how well the two kinds of capital returns are aligned.

Suggested Citation

  • Bengt Holmstrom, 1999. "Managerial Incentive Problems: A Dynamic Perspective," NBER Working Papers 6875, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:6875
    Note: CF
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w6875.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Meyer, Margaret A & Vickers, John, 1997. "Performance Comparisons and Dynamic Incentives," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(3), pages 547-581, June.
    2. Jeremy C. Stein, 1989. "Efficient Capital Markets, Inefficient Firms: A Model of Myopic Corporate Behavior," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 104(4), pages 655-669.
    3. Steven Shavell, 1979. "Risk Sharing and Incentives in the Principal and Agent Relationship," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 10(1), pages 55-73, Spring.
    4. James A. Mirrlees, 1976. "The Optimal Structure of Incentives and Authority Within an Organization," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 7(1), pages 105-131, Spring.
    5. Narayanan, M P, 1985. "Managerial Incentives for Short-term Results," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 40(5), pages 1469-1484, December.
    6. Gibbons, Robert & Murphy, Kevin J, 1992. "Optimal Incentive Contracts in the Presence of Career Concerns: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(3), pages 468-505, June.
    7. James L. Medoff & Katharine G. Abraham, 1980. "Experience, Performance, and Earnings," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 95(4), pages 703-736.
    8. Drew Fudenberg & Jean Tirole, 1986. "A "Signal-Jamming" Theory of Predation," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 17(3), pages 366-376, Autumn.
    9. Grossman, Sanford J & Hart, Oliver D, 1983. "An Analysis of the Principal-Agent Problem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 51(1), pages 7-45, January.
    10. Fama, Eugene F, 1980. "Agency Problems and the Theory of the Firm," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 88(2), pages 288-307, April.
    11. George A. Akerlof, 1970. "The Market for "Lemons": Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 84(3), pages 488-500.
    12. Bengt Holmstrom & Joan Ricart i Costa, 1986. "Managerial Incentives and Capital Management," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 101(4), pages 835-860.
    13. Bengt Holmstrom, 1979. "Moral Hazard and Observability," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 10(1), pages 74-91, Spring.
    14. Borland, Jeff, 1992. "Career Concerns: Incentives and Endogenous Learning in Labour Markets," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 6(3), pages 251-270.
    15. Scharfstein, David S & Stein, Jeremy C, 1990. "Herd Behavior and Investment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(3), pages 465-479, June.
    16. Radner, Roy, 1981. "Monitoring Cooperative Agreements in a Repeated Principal-Agent Relationship," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(5), pages 1127-1148, September.
    17. HOLMSTROM, Bengt, 1979. "Moral hazard and observability," LIDAM Reprints CORE 379, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    18. Ross, Stephen A, 1973. "The Economic Theory of Agency: The Principal's Problem," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 63(2), pages 134-139, May.
    19. Milton Harris & Bengt Holmstrom, 1982. "A Theory of Wage Dynamics," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 49(3), pages 315-333.
    20. Sherwin Rosen, 1982. "Authority, Control, and the Distribution of Earnings," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 13(2), pages 311-323, Autumn.
    21. Jeon, Seonghoon, 1996. "Moral hazard and reputational concerns in teams: Implications for organizational choice," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 297-315, May.
    22. Harris, Milton & Raviv, Artur, 1979. "Optimal incentive contracts with imperfect information," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 231-259, April.
    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. Eduard Marinov, 2016. "The 2016 Nobel Prize in Economics," Economic Thought journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Economic Research Institute, issue 6, pages 97-149.
    2. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2373-2437 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Holmstrom, Bengt R. & Tirole, Jean, 1989. "The theory of the firm," Handbook of Industrial Organization, in: R. Schmalensee & R. Willig (ed.), Handbook of Industrial Organization, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 2, pages 61-133, Elsevier.
    4. repec:eee:labchp:v:2:y:1986:i:c:p:789-848 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2485-2563 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. An, Suwei, 2023. "Essays on incentive contracts, M&As, and firm risk," Other publications TiSEM dd97d2f5-1c9d-47c5-ba62-f, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    7. Bartsch, Elga, 1996. "Enforcement of environmental liability in the case of uncertain causality and asymmetric information," Kiel Working Papers 755, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    8. Dionne, Georges & Harrington, Scott, 2017. "Insurance and Insurance Markets," Working Papers 17-2, HEC Montreal, Canada Research Chair in Risk Management.
    9. Alexander K. Koch & Eloïc Peyrache, 2011. "Aligning Ambition and Incentives," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 27(3), pages 655-688.
    10. Jean‐Jacques Laffont, 1989. "A Brief Overview of the Economics of Incomplete Markets," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 65(1), pages 54-65, March.
    11. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2016. "Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmström: Contract Theory," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2016-1, Nobel Prize Committee.
    12. David E. M. Sappington, 1991. "Incentives in Principal-Agent Relationships," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 5(2), pages 45-66, Spring.
    13. Rafael Tenorio, 2000. "The Economics of Professional Boxing Contracts," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 1(4), pages 363-384, November.
    14. Martin Byford, 2003. "Moral Hazard From Costless Hidden Actions," Working Papers 2003.03, School of Economics, La Trobe University.
    15. Rafel Crespí–Cladera & Carles Gispert, 2003. "Total Board Compensation, Governance and Performance of Spanish Listed Companies," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 17(1), pages 103-126, March.
    16. Bushman, Robert M. & Smith, Abbie J., 2001. "Financial accounting information and corporate governance," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1-3), pages 237-333, December.
    17. Joshua Graff Zivin & Lisa B. Kahn & Matthew Neidell, 2021. "Incentivizing Learning-by-Doing: The Role of Compensation Schemes," Research in Labor Economics, in: Workplace Productivity and Management Practices, volume 49, pages 139-178, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    18. Hearn, Bruce, 2014. "Institutional impact on the expropriation of private benefits of control in North Africa," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 1-23.
    19. Alex Edmans & Xavier Gabaix, 2016. "Executive Compensation: A Modern Primer," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 54(4), pages 1232-1287, December.
    20. Hermalin, Benjamin E. & Weisbach, Michael S., 2017. "Assessing Managerial Ability: Implications for Corporate Governance," Working Paper Series 2017-01, Ohio State University, Charles A. Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics.
    21. Edward P. Lazear & Paul Oyer, 2012. "Personnel Economics [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    22. Jean-Jacques Laffont, 1987. "Le risque moral dans la relation de mandat," Revue Économique, Programme National Persée, vol. 38(1), pages 5-24.
    23. Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W, 1997. "A Survey of Corporate Governance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(2), pages 737-783, June.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty

    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:nbr:nberwo:6875. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.