Career Concerns and Performance Reporting in Optimal Incentive Contracts
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Alexander Wolitzky
In many contracting settings incentives are provided not only through transfers but also through performance reports to prospective employers. This paper studies a principal-agent model of this kind, in which the principal sends a non-verifiable report of output to a competitive labor market interested in the agent's ability. It is assumed that the principal and agent write an enforceable contract over both payments and reports as a function of output, and that the contract terms they agree to cannot be observed by the market. When contracts are unrestricted, reports cannot affect the agent's future wage in equilibrium, because the agent will always pay the principal to give a good report. Under limited liability, reports can affect future wages, but only by designating output as "good" or "bad." This informative performance reporting benefits the principal, and may more than make up for the costs imposed by limited liability. The possibilities that the market may have some direct information about output, that the principal may have additional information about the agent's ability, and that the principal may have psychological or reputational costs of misreporting output are also considered.
©2012 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Advances Article
- Seller Cheap Talk in Almost Common Value Auction
- Strategic Effects of Renegotiation-Proof Contracts
- Contributions Article
- Uniquely Representing "A Preference for Uniformity"
- An Experimental Comparison of Sequential First- and Second-Price Auctions with Synergies
- Transparency, Career Concerns, and Incentives for Acquiring Expertise
- Career Concerns and Performance Reporting in Optimal Incentive Contracts
- Two Notes on the Blotto Game
- The Tennis Coach Problem: A Game-Theoretic and Experimental Study
- Multidimensional Product Differentiation with Discrete Characteristics
- Screening and Financial Contracting in the Face of Outside Competition
- On Rationalizability and Beliefs in Discrete Private-Value First-Price Auctions
- Commitment versus Flexibility in Enforcement Games
- Endogenous Preferences and Dynamic Contract Design
- Intergenerational Interactions in Human Capital Accumulation
- Behavior-Based Price Discrimination by a Patient Seller
- Altruism and Local Interaction
- Education Signaling with Uncertain Returns
- An Axiomatic Approach to Arbitration and its Application in Bargaining Games
- Consensual and Conflictual Democratization
- Topics Article
- Preference for Variety
- Information Theory and Observational Limitations in Decision Making
- Strict Concavity of the Value Function for a Family of Dynamic Accumulation Models
- A Folk Theorem for Games when Frequent Monitoring Decreases Noise
- Characterizing Welfare-egalitarian Mechanisms with Solidarity When Valuations are Private Information
- Correlation in the Multiplayer Electronic Mail Game
- Dominance Solvability of Large k-Price Auctions
- Treading a Fine Line: Characterisations and Impossibilities for Liberal Principles in Infinitely-Lived Societies
- An Axiomatization of Learning Rules when Counterfactuals are not Observed
- On a Notion of Similarity with Endowments in Public Economics
- Outsourcing and Downstream R&D under Economies of Scale
- On Communication and the Weak Sequential Core
- Asymmetric Single-peaked Preferences
- Revealing Private Information in Bargaining
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Advances Article
- Seller Cheap Talk in Almost Common Value Auction
- Strategic Effects of Renegotiation-Proof Contracts
- Contributions Article
- Uniquely Representing "A Preference for Uniformity"
- An Experimental Comparison of Sequential First- and Second-Price Auctions with Synergies
- Transparency, Career Concerns, and Incentives for Acquiring Expertise
- Career Concerns and Performance Reporting in Optimal Incentive Contracts
- Two Notes on the Blotto Game
- The Tennis Coach Problem: A Game-Theoretic and Experimental Study
- Multidimensional Product Differentiation with Discrete Characteristics
- Screening and Financial Contracting in the Face of Outside Competition
- On Rationalizability and Beliefs in Discrete Private-Value First-Price Auctions
- Commitment versus Flexibility in Enforcement Games
- Endogenous Preferences and Dynamic Contract Design
- Intergenerational Interactions in Human Capital Accumulation
- Behavior-Based Price Discrimination by a Patient Seller
- Altruism and Local Interaction
- Education Signaling with Uncertain Returns
- An Axiomatic Approach to Arbitration and its Application in Bargaining Games
- Consensual and Conflictual Democratization
- Topics Article
- Preference for Variety
- Information Theory and Observational Limitations in Decision Making
- Strict Concavity of the Value Function for a Family of Dynamic Accumulation Models
- A Folk Theorem for Games when Frequent Monitoring Decreases Noise
- Characterizing Welfare-egalitarian Mechanisms with Solidarity When Valuations are Private Information
- Correlation in the Multiplayer Electronic Mail Game
- Dominance Solvability of Large k-Price Auctions
- Treading a Fine Line: Characterisations and Impossibilities for Liberal Principles in Infinitely-Lived Societies
- An Axiomatization of Learning Rules when Counterfactuals are not Observed
- On a Notion of Similarity with Endowments in Public Economics
- Outsourcing and Downstream R&D under Economies of Scale
- On Communication and the Weak Sequential Core
- Asymmetric Single-peaked Preferences
- Revealing Private Information in Bargaining
