La ont and Tirole [3] show that when the uncertainty about the agent's ability is small, the equilibrium must involve a large amount of pooling, but it is not necessary to be a partition equilibrium. They construct a nonpartition continuation equilibrium for a given rst-period menu of contracts and conjecture that this continuation equilibrium need not be suboptimal for the whole game under sma...

Classic financial agency theory recommends compensation through stock options rather than shares to induce risk neutrality in otherwise risk averse agents. In an experiment, we find that subjects acting as executives do also take risks that are excessive from the perspective of shareholders if compensated through options. Compensation through restricted company stock reduces the uptake of exces...

In Hordaland county in Norway, performance-based contracts between the transport authority and the bus operators were signed in year 2000. This paper will investigate the development of this particular contractual type. Apart from a more limited performance-based contract in Oslo, Hordaland was the first county in Norway to adopt a principle of performance-based contracts. The key characteristi...

Performance Pay and Risk Aversion A main prediction of agency theory is the well known risk-incentive trade-off. Incentive contracts should be found in environments with little uncertainty and for agents with low degrees of risk aversion. There is an ongoing debate in the literature about the first trade-off. Due to lack of data, there has so far been hardly any empirical evidence about the sec...

This paper analyzes optimal incentive compatible debt contracts when lenders are risk averse. The decisive factor in this regard is that risk aversion requires to consider further sources of risk the lenders are exposed to. The main results derived in a setting of asymmetric information – the payment obligation of the optimal incentive compatible contract increases due to risk aversion of lende...

Do Walrasian markets function orderly in the presence of adverse selection? In particular, Is their outcome efficient when exclusive contracts are enforceable? This paper addresses these questions in the context of a Rothschild and Stiglitz insurance economy. We identify an externality associated with the presence of adverse selection as a special form of consumption externality. Consequently, ...

This study examines the relationship between a venture capitalist and an entrepreneur and follows it from its inception to the exit stage. The model we use is a multi-period game theoretic model with moral hazard where the contract is set in the first period. The contribution of the study lies in the insights it provides on optimal contracts and its characterization of an endogenous exit point....

We examine a randomized trial that allows separate identification of peer screening and enforcement of credit contracts. A South African microlender offered half its clients a bonus for referring a friend who repaid a loan. For the remaining clients, the bonus was conditional on loan approval. After approval, the repayment incentive was removed from half the referrers in the first group and add...

This paper is focused on the coordination of order and production policy between buyers and suppliers in supply chains. When a buyer and a supplier of an item work independently, the buyer will place orders based on his economic order quantity (EOQ). However, the buyer’s EOQ may not lead to an optimal policy for the supplier. It can be shown that a cooperative batching policy can reduce total c...