The curse of long horizons

We study dynamic moral hazard when the principal can only commit to spot contracts. The principal and agent are ex ante symmetrically uncertain about the difficulty of the job, and update their beliefs upon observing output. Since the agent's effort is private, he has an additional incentive to...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Bhaskar, V. (Author), Mailath, G.J (Author)
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier B.V. 2019
Subjects:
Online Access:View Fulltext in Publisher
LEADER 01279nam a2200193Ia 4500
001 10.1016-j.jmateco.2019.01.009
008 220511s2019 CNT 000 0 und d
020 |a 03044068 (ISSN) 
245 1 0 |a The curse of long horizons 
260 0 |b Elsevier B.V.  |c 2019 
856 |z View Fulltext in Publisher  |u https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmateco.2019.01.009 
520 3 |a We study dynamic moral hazard when the principal can only commit to spot contracts. The principal and agent are ex ante symmetrically uncertain about the difficulty of the job, and update their beliefs upon observing output. Since the agent's effort is private, he has an additional incentive to shirk when the principal induces effort: shirking results in the principal having incorrect beliefs, giving rise to future informational rents. We show that the effort-inducing contract must provide increasingly high-powered incentives as the length of the relationship increases. Thus it is never optimal to always induce effort in very long relationships. © 2019 Elsevier B.V. 
650 0 4 |a Differences in beliefs 
650 0 4 |a High-powered incentives 
650 0 4 |a Moral hazard 
650 0 4 |a Principal-agency 
700 1 |a Bhaskar, V.  |e author 
700 1 |a Mailath, G.J.  |e author 
773 |t Journal of Mathematical Economics