IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/53851.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Job Protection vs. Contracts At-Will: Trading-off Entrenchment and Shirking

Author

Listed:
  • Inderst, Roman

Abstract

I take an efficient contracting approach to answer the question how much "job protection" to offer employees, in particular those at the top of organizations. Given their privileged information or formal authority, senior managers who are not given such protection are likely to take opportunistic actions that make them less dispensable. The optimal employment contract trades off the resulting inefficiencies that arise from such "self made" job security with the reduced incentives and higher compensation costs under explicit employment protection. One implication of the model is that more senior managers, such as CEOs, should receive both higher rents and more protection, e.g., through contracts that are explicitly not at-will or that specify a longer duration.

Suggested Citation

  • Inderst, Roman, 2012. "Job Protection vs. Contracts At-Will: Trading-off Entrenchment and Shirking," MPRA Paper 53851, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:53851
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/53851/1/MPRA_paper_53851.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Richard A. Lambert, 1986. "Executive Effort and Selection of Risky Projects," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 17(1), pages 77-88, Spring.
    2. repec:bla:jfinan:v:58:y:2003:i:2:p:519-548 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. James M. Malcomson, 1997. "Contracts, Hold-Up, and Labor Markets," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 35(4), pages 1916-1957, December.
    4. Kahn, Charles & Huberman, Gur, 1988. "Two-sided Uncertainty and "Up-or-Out" Contracts," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 6(4), pages 423-444, October.
    5. Stuart L. Gillan & Jay C. Hartzell & Robert Parrino, 2009. "Explicit versus Implicit Contracts: Evidence from CEO Employment Agreements," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(4), pages 1629-1655, August.
    6. Holmstrom, Bengt & Milgrom, Paul, 1991. "Multitask Principal-Agent Analyses: Incentive Contracts, Asset Ownership, and Job Design," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 7(0), pages 24-52, Special I.
    7. Lambert, Richard A. & Larcker, David F., 1985. "Golden parachutes, executive decision-making, and shareholder wealth," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(1-3), pages 179-203, April.
    8. Demski, Js & Sappington, Dem, 1987. "Delegated Expertise," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(1), pages 68-89.
    9. Andres Almazan & Javier Suarez, 2003. "Entrenchment and Severance Pay in Optimal Governance Structures," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 58(2), pages 519-547, April.
    10. Steven D. Levitt & Christopher M. Snyder, 1997. "Is No. News Bad News? Information Transmission and the Role of "Early Warning" in the Principal-Agent Model," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 28(4), pages 641-661, Winter.
    11. James M. Malcomson, 1997. "Contracts, Hold-Up, and Labor Markets," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 35(4), pages 1916-1957, December.
    12. Knoeber, Charles R, 1986. "Golden Parachutes, Shark Repellents, and Hostile Tender Offers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(1), pages 155-167, March.
    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. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2373-2437 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2291-2372 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Lindbeck, Assar & Weibull, Jörgen, 2020. "Delegation of investment decisions, and optimal remuneration of agents," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    4. Keiichi Hori & Hiroshi Osano, 2017. "Agency Contracts, Noncommitment Timing Strategies and Real Options," The Japanese Economic Review, Springer, vol. 68(4), pages 521-554, December.
    5. Malcomson James M, 2009. "Principal and Expert Agent," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 9(1), pages 1-36, May.
    6. Roman Inderst & Sebastian Pfeil, 2013. "Securitization and Compensation in Financial Institutions," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 17(4), pages 1323-1364.
    7. P. Raghavendra Rau & Jin Xu, 2013. "How Do Ex Ante Severance Pay Contracts Fit into Optimal Executive Incentive Schemes?," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(3), pages 631-671, June.
    8. Iossa, Elisabetta & Martimort, David, 2015. "Pessimistic information gathering," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 75-96.
    9. Suman Ghosh & Michael Waldman, 2010. "Standard promotion practices versus up‐or‐out contracts," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 41(2), pages 301-325, June.
    10. Alex Edmans & Xavier Gabaix, 2016. "Executive Compensation: A Modern Primer," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 54(4), pages 1232-1287, December.
    11. Martimort, David & Iossa, Elisabetta, 2013. "Hidden Action or Hidden Information? How Information Gathering Shapes Contract Design," CEPR Discussion Papers 9552, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    12. Van Wesep, Edward D. & Wang, Sean, 2014. "The prevention of excess managerial risk taking," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 579-593.
    13. Gromb, Denis & Martimort, David, 2007. "Collusion and the organization of delegated expertise," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 137(1), pages 271-299, November.
    14. Shin, Dongsoo, 2008. "Information acquisition and optimal project management," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 26(4), pages 1032-1043, July.
    15. Matthias Kiefer & Edward Jones & Andrew Adams, 2016. "Principals, Agents and Incomplete Contracts: Are Surrender of Control and Renegotiation the Solution?," CFI Discussion Papers 1603, Centre for Finance and Investment, Heriot Watt University.
    16. Cronqvist, Henrik & Fahlenbrach, Rüdiger, 2013. "CEO contract design: How do strong principals do it?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(3), pages 659-674.
    17. Sokolyk, Tatyana, 2011. "The effects of antitakeover provisions on acquisition targets," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 612-627, June.
    18. Meg Adachi‐Sato, 2018. "Stock vesting conditions, control benefits and managerial replacement," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 51(1), pages 275-313, February.
    19. Meg Adachi-Sato, 2013. "Incentive Pay that Causes Inefficient Managerial Replacement ," CIRJE F-Series CIRJE-F-890, CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo.
    20. Offenberg, David & Officer, Micah S., 2014. "The totality of change-in-control payments," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 75-87.
    21. Volker Laux, 2008. "Board Independence and CEO Turnover," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(1), pages 137-171, March.
    22. Xu, Jin & Yang, Jun, 2016. "Golden hellos: Signing bonuses for new top executives," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(1), pages 175-195.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Employment agreements; At-will contracts; Contract duration;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D86 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Economics of Contract Law

    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:pra:mprapa:53851. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.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.