IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/red/sed012/433.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Optimal Self-enforcing and Termination

Author

Listed:
  • Cheng Wang

    (Iowa State University)

Abstract

We study a dynamic principal-agent relationship in which the agent receives a stochastic outside opportunity/offer each period and he cannot commit to not leaving the ongoing relationship.Termination, while costly, allows the principal to go to an external market to hire a new agent. We treat self-enforcing as a choice variable by letting the principal respond strategically to the agent's outside offers. Starting initially from a sufficiently low expected utility of the agent (so the commitment constraint is binding, initially), the continuation of the optimal contract converges to Burdett (1978) where each period the agent quits whenever his outside offer is above the utility the current principal offers, and he stays to receive the same constant expected utility otherwise. On the path of convergence, termination occurs whenever the agent's outside offer exceeds a constant ceiling, and the principal acts to match the agent's outside offer if it is below that constant ceiling but better than his current promised utility. The convergence is monotonic. Conditional on continuation, over time the agent's expected utility converges monotonically to its limiting level while the commitment constraint binds monotonically less; and the limiting utility of the agent is the lowest level of his expected utility at which the commitment constraint is not binding.

Suggested Citation

  • Cheng Wang, 2012. "Optimal Self-enforcing and Termination," 2012 Meeting Papers 433, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    • Handle: RePEc:red:sed012:433
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://red-files-public.s3.amazonaws.com/meetpapers/2012/paper_433.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cheng Wang, 1995. "Dynamic Insurance with Private Information and Balanced Budgets," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 62(4), pages 577-595.
    2. Wang, Cheng, 2011. "Termination of dynamic contracts in an equilibrium labor market model," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(1), pages 74-110, January.
    3. Peter M. DeMarzo & Michael J. Fishman, 2007. "Optimal Long-Term Financial Contracting," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 20(6), pages 2079-2128, November.
    4. Debraj Ray, 2002. "The Time Structure of Self-Enforcing Agreements," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(2), pages 547-582, March.
    5. Spear, Stephen E. & Wang, Cheng, 2005. "When to fire a CEO: optimal termination in dynamic contracts," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 120(2), pages 239-256, February.
    6. Yuliy Sannikov, 2008. "A Continuous-Time Version of the Principal-Agent Problem," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 75(3), pages 957-984.
    7. Jonathan Thomas & Tim Worrall, 1988. "Self-Enforcing Wage Contracts," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 55(4), pages 541-554.
    8. Giuseppe Moscarini, 2005. "Job Matching and the Wage Distribution," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 73(2), pages 481-516, March.
    9. Jovanovic, Boyan, 1984. "Matching, Turnover, and Unemployment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 92(1), pages 108-122, February.
    10. Mortensen, Dale & Pissarides, Christopher, 2011. "Job Creation and Job Destruction in the Theory of Unemployment," Ekonomicheskaya Politika / Economic Policy, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, vol. 1, pages 1-19.
    11. Stephen E. Spear & Sanjay Srivastava, 1987. "On Repeated Moral Hazard with Discounting," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 54(4), pages 599-617.
    12. Narayana R. Kocherlakota, 1996. "Implications of Efficient Risk Sharing without Commitment," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 63(4), pages 595-609.
    13. Phelan Christopher, 1995. "Repeated Moral Hazard and One-Sided Commitment," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 66(2), pages 488-506, August.
    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. Wang, Cheng, 2011. "Termination of dynamic contracts in an equilibrium labor market model," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(1), pages 74-110, January.

    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. Wang, Cheng & Yang, Youzhi, 2019. "Optimal self-enforcement and termination," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 161-186.
    2. Cheng Wang & Youzhi Yang, 2023. "On the Pure Theory of Wage Dispersion," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 47, pages 246-277, January.
    3. Wang, Cheng, 2011. "Termination of dynamic contracts in an equilibrium labor market model," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(1), pages 74-110, January.
    4. Wang, Cheng & Yang, Youzhi, 2015. "Outside opportunities and termination," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 207-228.
    5. Golosov, M. & Tsyvinski, A. & Werquin, N., 2016. "Recursive Contracts and Endogenously Incomplete Markets," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 725-841, Elsevier.
    6. Wang, Cheng & Yang, Youzhi, 2015. "Equilibrium matching and termination," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 208-229.
    7. Zhao, Rui R., 2007. "Dynamic risk-sharing with two-sided moral hazard," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 136(1), pages 601-640, September.
    8. Wang, Cheng & Yang, Youzhi, 2022. "Optimal CEO turnover," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 203(C).
    9. Grochulski, Borys & Zhang, Yuzhe, 2023. "Termination as an incentive device," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 18(1), January.
    10. Krueger, Dirk & Uhlig, Harald, 2006. "Competitive risk sharing contracts with one-sided commitment," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(7), pages 1661-1691, October.
    11. Yang, Youzhi, 2009. "Essays on Repated Moral Hazard," ISU General Staff Papers 200901010800001746, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    12. Karaivanov, Alexander K. & Martin, Fernando M., 2018. "Markov-perfect risk sharing, moral hazard and limited commitment," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 1-23.
    13. Jonathan Créchet, 2023. "Risk Sharing in a Dual Labor Market," Working Papers 2307E, University of Ottawa, Department of Economics.
    14. Daniel F. Garrett & Alessandro Pavan, 2012. "Managerial Turnover in a Changing World," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 120(5), pages 879-925.
    15. Borys Grochulski & Yuzhe Zhang, 2017. "Market‐Based Incentives," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 58(2), pages 331-382, May.
    16. Luo, Jie & Wang, Cheng, 2018. "Optimal sovereign lending and default," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 190-213.
    17. Forand, Jean Guillaume & Zapal, Jan, 2020. "Production priorities in dynamic relationships," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 15(3), July.
    18. Wang, Cheng, 2006. "Equilibrium Layoff As Termination of a Dynamic Contract," Staff General Research Papers Archive 12704, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    19. Miao, Jianjun & Zhang, Yuzhe, 2015. "A duality approach to continuous-time contracting problems with limited commitment," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 159(PB), pages 929-988.
    20. Aiyagari, S. Rao & Williamson, Stephen D., 2000. "Money and Dynamic Credit Arrangements with Private Information," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 91(2), pages 248-279, April.

    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:red:sed012:433. 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: Christian Zimmermann (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sedddea.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.