IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tse/wpaper/31604.html

Career Concerns with Exponential Learning

Author

Listed:
  • Bonatti, Alessandro
  • Hörner, Johannes

Abstract

This paper analyzes the impact of market structure on career concerns. Effort increases the probability that a skilled agent achieves a one-time breakthrough. Wages are based on assessed ability and on expected output. For any wage, the agent works too little, too late. Under short-term contracts, effort and wages are single-peaked with seniority, due to the strategic substitutability of effort levels at different times. Both delay and underprovision of effort worsen if effort is observable. Commitment to wages by competing firms mitigates these inefficiencies. In that case, the optimal contract features piecewise constant wages and severance pay.

Suggested Citation

  • Bonatti, Alessandro & Hörner, Johannes, 2017. "Career Concerns with Exponential Learning," TSE Working Papers 17-793, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    • Handle: RePEc:tse:wpaper:31604
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.tse-fr.eu/sites/default/files/TSE/documents/doc/by/horner/single_agent.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Kaniel, Ron & Orlov, Dmitry, 2020. "Intermediated Asymmetric Information, Compensation, and Career Prospects," CEPR Discussion Papers 14586, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Zenan Wu & Xi Weng, 2018. "Managerial turnover and entrenchment," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(4), pages 742-771, October.
    3. Ivan Marinovic & Martin Szydlowski, 2019. "Monitor Reputation and Transparency," 2019 Meeting Papers 125, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    4. Benjamin Davies, 2022. "Why do experts give simple advice?," Papers 2209.11710, arXiv.org.
    5. Grabiszewski, Konrad & Horenstein, Alex, 2020. "Effort is not a monotonic function of skills: Results from a global mobile experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 634-652.
    6. Farzad Pourbabaee, 2024. "Reputation, learning and project choice in frictional economies," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 78(4), pages 1075-1115, December.
    7. Chia-Hui Chen & Junichiro Ishida & Wing Suen, 2021. "Reputation Concerns in Risky Experimentation [Reputation and Survival: Learning in a Dynamic Signalling Model]," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 19(4), pages 1981-2021.
    8. Hakenes, Hendrik & Katolnik, Svetlana, 2017. "On the incentive effects of job rotation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 424-441.
    9. Thomas, Caroline, 2019. "Experimentation with reputation concerns – Dynamic signalling with changing types," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 179(C), pages 366-415.
    10. Shivam Gupta & Anupam Agrawal & Jennifer K. Ryan, 2023. "Agile contracting: Managing incentives under uncertain needs," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 32(3), pages 972-988, March.
    11. Moisson, Paul-Henri, 2024. "Meritocracy and Inequality," TSE Working Papers 24-1518, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised Apr 2024.
    12. Gonzalo Cisternas, 2018. "Career Concerns and the Nature of Skills," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(2), pages 152-189, May.
    13. Wong, Tsz-Ning & Yang, Lily Ling, 2021. "Dynamic expert incentives in teams," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 27-47.
    14. Yildirim, Huseyin, 2025. "The economics of career concerns in teamwork," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 226(C).
    15. Azoulay, Pierre & Bonatti, Alessandro & Krieger, Joshua L., 2017. "The career effects of scandal: Evidence from scientific retractions," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(9), pages 1552-1569.
    16. Tan Gan & Hongcheng Li, 2025. "Robust Contract with Career Concerns," Papers 2507.22852, arXiv.org.
    17. Fudenberg, Drew & Georgiadis, George & Rayo, Luis, 2021. "Working to learn," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 197(C).
    18. Lawson, Nicholas, 2024. "You should reject this paper: Dynamic agency, sequential evaluation, and learning in academic publishing," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 217(C), pages 112-140.
    19. Gao, Hong & Xu, Haibo, 2020. "Learning, belief manipulation and optimal relationship termination," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 190(C).
    20. Keller, Godfrey & Novák, Vladimír & Willems, Tim, 2019. "A note on optimal experimentation under risk aversion," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 179(C), pages 476-487.
    21. Heinsalu, Sander, 2017. "Good signals gone bad: Dynamic signalling with switched effort levels," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 132-141.
    22. Klein, Nicolas & Mylovanov, Tymofiy, 2017. "Will truth out?—An advisor’s quest to appear competent," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 112-121.
    23. Brendan Daley & Ruoyu Wang, 2018. "When to Release Feedback in a Dynamic Tournament," Decision Analysis, INFORMS, vol. 15(1), pages 11-26, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • M52 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Compensation and Compensation Methods and Their Effects

    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:tse:wpaper:31604. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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/tsetofr.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.