IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jetheo/v166y2016icp242-281.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Optimal dynamic contracts with moral hazard and costly monitoring

Author

Listed:
  • Piskorski, Tomasz
  • Westerfield, Mark M.

Abstract

We introduce a tractable dynamic monitoring technology into a continuous-time moral-hazard problem and study the optimal long-term contract between principal and agent. Monitoring adds value by allowing the principal to reduce the intensity of performance-based incentives, reducing the likelihood of costly termination. We present a novel characterization of optimal dynamic incentive provision when performance-based incentives may decline continuously to zero. Termination happens in equilibrium only if its costs are relatively low. In general, the intensity of both monitoring and performance-based compensation can be non-monotonic functions of the quality of past performance. Our results can also help explain puzzling empirical findings on the relationship between performance history and future pay-performance sensitivity and on the linkage between termination, performance, and monitoring. We also discuss implications of our model for optimal security design and endogenous financing constraints.

Suggested Citation

  • Piskorski, Tomasz & Westerfield, Mark M., 2016. "Optimal dynamic contracts with moral hazard and costly monitoring," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 242-281.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jetheo:v:166:y:2016:i:c:p:242-281
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2016.08.003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022053116300564
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jet.2016.08.003?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alex Edmans & Xavier Gabaix, 2011. "Tractability in Incentive Contracting," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(9), pages 2865-2894.
    2. Zhang, Yuzhe, 2009. "Dynamic contracting with persistent shocks," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(2), pages 635-675, March.
    3. Alex Edmans & Xavier Gabaix & Tomasz Sadzik & Yuliy Sannikov, 2012. "Dynamic CEO Compensation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(5), pages 1603-1647, October.
    4. Dirk Jenter & Katharina Lewellen, 2021. "Performance-Induced CEO Turnover [The “Wall Street Walk” and shareholder activism: Exit as a form of voice]," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 34(2), pages 569-617.
    5. Zhiguo He, 2012. "Dynamic Compensation Contracts with Private Savings," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 25(5), pages 1494-1549.
    6. Bruno Biais & Thomas Mariotti & Guillaume Plantin & Jean-Charles Rochet, 2007. "Dynamic Security Design: Convergence to Continuous Time and Asset Pricing Implications," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 74(2), pages 345-390.
    7. Peter M. DeMarzo & Michael J. Fishman, 2007. "Agency and Optimal Investment Dynamics," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 20(1), pages 151-188, January.
    8. 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.
    9. Bruno Biais & Thomas Mariotti & Jean-Charles Rochet & StÈphane Villeneuve, 2010. "Large Risks, Limited Liability, and Dynamic Moral Hazard," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 78(1), pages 73-118, January.
    10. John Y. Zhu, 2013. "Optimal Contracts with Shirking," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 80(2), pages 812-839.
    11. Gian Luca Clementi & Hugo A. Hopenhayn, 2006. "A Theory of Financing Constraints and Firm Dynamics," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(1), pages 229-265.
    12. Dumas, Bernard, 1991. "Super contact and related optimality conditions," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 15(4), pages 675-685, October.
    13. Yuliy Sannikov & Andrzej Skrzypacz, 2010. "The Role of Information in Repeated Games With Frequent Actions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 78(3), pages 847-882, May.
    14. Gilson, Stuart C & Vetsuypens, Michael R, 1993. "CEO Compensation in Financially Distressed Firms: An Empirical Analysis," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(2), pages 425-458, June.
    15. Douglas W. Diamond, 1984. "Financial Intermediation and Delegated Monitoring," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 51(3), pages 393-414.
    16. Weisbach, Michael S., 1988. "Outside directors and CEO turnover," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(1-2), pages 431-460, January.
    17. 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.
    18. Noah Williams, 2011. "Persistent Private Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 79(4), pages 1233-1275, July.
    19. Bushman, Robert & Dai, Zhonglan & Wang, Xue, 2010. "Risk and CEO turnover," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(3), pages 381-398, June.
    20. Jensen, Michael C & Murphy, Kevin J, 1990. "Performance Pay and Top-Management Incentives," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(2), pages 225-264, April.
    21. Peter M. Demarzo & Michael J. Fishman & Zhiguo He & Neng Wang, 2012. "Dynamic Agency and the q Theory of Investment," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(6), pages 2295-2340, December.
    22. Cheng Wang, 2005. "Dynamic costly state verification," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 25(4), pages 887-916, June.
    23. Thomas Philippon & Yuliy Sannikov, 2007. "Real Options in a Dynamic Agency Model, with Applications to Financial Development, IPOs, and Business Risk," NBER Working Papers 13584, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    24. Tomasz Piskorski & Alexei Tchistyi, 2010. "Optimal Mortgage Design," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(8), pages 3098-3140, August.
    25. Steven N. Kaplan & Bernadette Minton, 2006. "How has CEO Turnover Changed? Increasingly Performance Sensitive Boards and Increasingly Uneasy CEOs," NBER Working Papers 12465, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    26. Zhiguo He, 2009. "Optimal Executive Compensation when Firm Size Follows Geometric Brownian Motion," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(2), pages 859-892, February.
    27. Brickley, James A., 2003. "Empirical research on CEO turnover and firm-performance: a discussion," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(1-3), pages 227-233, December.
    28. Shockley, Richard L & Thakor, Anjan V, 1997. "Bank Loan Commitment Contracts: Data, Theory, and Tests," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 29(4), pages 517-534, November.
    29. Townsend, Robert M., 1979. "Optimal contracts and competitive markets with costly state verification," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 265-293, October.
    30. Santikian, Lori, 2014. "The ties that bind: Bank relationships and small business lending," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 177-213.
    31. Douglas Gale & Martin Hellwig, 1985. "Incentive-Compatible Debt Contracts: The One-Period Problem," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 52(4), pages 647-663.
    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. Borys Grochulski & Russell Wong, 2018. "Contingent Debt and Performance Pricing in an Optimal Capital Structure Model with Financial Distress and Reorganization," Working Paper 18-17, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
    2. Pierre Chaigneau & Nicolas Sahuguet, 2023. "The Complementarity Between Signal Informativeness and Monitoring," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(1), pages 141-185, March.
    3. Xun Liu & Sen Lin & Lixing Liu & Fei Qian & Kun Zhang, 2020. "Exploring the Factors Triggering Occupational Ethics Risk of Technology Transaction in Chinese Construction Industry," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(4), pages 1-18, February.
    4. Cheng Wang, 2005. "Dynamic costly state verification," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 25(4), pages 887-916, June.
    5. Feng, Felix Zhiyu & Westerfield, Mark M., 2021. "Dynamic resource allocation with hidden volatility," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(2), pages 560-581.
    6. Graham, John R. & Kim, Hyunseob & Leary, Mark, 2020. "CEO-board dynamics," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 137(3), pages 612-636.
    7. Shiming Fu & Giulio Trigilia, 2018. "Voluntary disclosure under dynamic moral hazard," 2018 Meeting Papers 448, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    8. Rodivilov, Alexander, 2022. "Monitoring innovation," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 297-326.
    9. Nirav Mehta, 2019. "Measuring quality for use in incentive schemes: The case of “shrinkage” estimators," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 10(4), pages 1537-1577, November.
    10. Tak-Yuen Wong, 2019. "Dynamic Agency and Endogenous Risk-Taking," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(9), pages 4032-4048, September.
    11. Orlov, Dmitry, 2022. "Frequent monitoring in dynamic contracts," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 206(C).
    12. Zhiyao Chen & Ilya A. Strebulaev & Yuhang Xing & Xiaoyan Zhang, 2021. "Strategic Risk Shifting and the Idiosyncratic Volatility Puzzle: An Empirical Investigation," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(5), pages 2751-2772, May.
    13. Grochulski, Borys & Zhang, Yuzhe, 2023. "Termination as an incentive device," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 18(1), January.
    14. Barbos, Andrei, 2019. "Dynamic contracts with random monitoring," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 1-16.
    15. Iván Marinovic & Martin Szydlowski, 2022. "Monitoring with career concerns," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 53(2), pages 404-428, June.
    16. Mayer, Simon, 2022. "Financing breakthroughs under failure risk," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(3), pages 807-848.
    17. Shibata, Takashi & Nishihara, Michi, 2023. "Optimal financing and investment strategies under asymmetric information on liquidation value," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    18. Hori, Keiichi & Osano, Hiroshi, 2020. "Dynamic contract and discretionary termination policy under loss aversion," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    19. Achim, Peter & Knoepfle, Jan, 2024. "Relational enforcement," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 19(2), May.
    20. Felix Zhiyu Feng & Wenyu Wang & Yufeng Wu & Gaoqing Zhang, 2023. "Ignorance Is Bliss: The Screening Effect of (Noisy) Information," Papers 2302.11128, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2024.
    21. Zhiyao Chen & Ran Duchin, 2024. "Do Nonfinancial Firms Use Financial Assets to Take Risk?," The Review of Corporate Finance Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 13(1), pages 1-37.
    22. Aaron Finkle & Dongsoo Shin, 2020. "Obstructive monitoring," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(4), pages 873-891, October.
    23. Dylan Possamai & Nizar Touzi, 2020. "Is there a Golden Parachute in Sannikov's principal-agent problem?," Papers 2007.05529, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2022.

    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. Ronald Anderson & Cecilia Bustamante & Stéphane Guibaud & Mihail Zervos, 2018. "Agency, Firm Growth, and Managerial Turnover," Post-Print hal-03391936, HAL.
    2. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/2iclr3ojhv9ko9ord4mpg9odaj is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Ronald Anderson & Cecilia Bustamante & Stéphane Guibaud & Mihail Zervos, 2018. "Agency, Firm Growth, and Managerial Turnover," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03391936, HAL.
    4. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/2iclr3ojhv9ko9ord4mpg9odaj is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Ronald Anderson & Cecilia Bustamante & Stéphane Guibaud & Mihail Zervos, 2018. "Agency, Firm Growth, and Managerial Turnover," SciencePo Working papers hal-03391936, HAL.
    6. Bolton, Patrick & Li, Ye & Wang, Neng & Yang, Jinqiang, 2020. "Dynamic Banking and the Value of Deposits," Working Paper Series 2020-13, Ohio State University, Charles A. Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics.
    7. Mayer, Simon, 2022. "Financing breakthroughs under failure risk," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(3), pages 807-848.
    8. 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.
    9. Zhiguo He & Bin Wei & Jianfeng Yu & Feng Gao, 2017. "Optimal Long-Term Contracting with Learning," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(6), pages 2006-2065.
    10. Patrick Bolton & Neng Wang & Jinqiang Yang, 2016. "Liquidity and Risk Management: Coordinating Investment and Compensation Policies," 2016 Meeting Papers 1703, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    11. Patrick Bolton & Neng Wang & Jinqiang Yang, 2019. "Optimal Contracting, Corporate Finance, and Valuation with Inalienable Human Capital," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 74(3), pages 1363-1429, June.
    12. Villeneuve, Stéphane & Abi Jaber, Eduardo, 2022. "Gaussian Agency problems with memory and Linear Contracts," TSE Working Papers 22-1363, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    13. Ai, Hengjie & Li, Rui, 2015. "Investment and CEO compensation under limited commitment," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(3), pages 452-472.
    14. Eduardo Abi Jaber & Stéphane Villeneuve, 2022. "Gaussian Agency problems with memory and Linear Contracts," Post-Print hal-03783062, HAL.
    15. Eduardo Abi Jaber & St'ephane Villeneuve, 2022. "Gaussian Agency problems with memory and Linear Contracts," Papers 2209.10878, arXiv.org.
    16. Anderson, Ronald W. & Bustamante, Maria Cecilia & Guibaud, Stéphane & Zervos, Mihail, 2018. "Agency, firm growth, and managerial turnover," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 68784, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    17. Eduardo Abi Jaber & Stéphane Villeneuve, 2022. "Gaussian Agency problems with memory and Linear Contracts," Working Papers hal-03783062, HAL.
    18. Tak-Yuen Wong, 2019. "Dynamic Agency and Endogenous Risk-Taking," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(9), pages 4032-4048, September.
    19. Jianjun Miao & Alejandro Rivera, 2016. "Robust Contracts in Continuous Time," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 84, pages 1405-1440, July.
    20. Maideu-Morera, Gerard, 2024. "Firm Size and Compensation Dynamics with Risk Aversion and Persistent Private Information," TSE Working Papers 24-1535, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    21. Qian Qi, 2023. "Artificial Intelligence and Dual Contract," Papers 2303.12350, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2024.
    22. Dylan Possamai & Nizar Touzi, 2020. "Is there a Golden Parachute in Sannikov's principal-agent problem?," Papers 2007.05529, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2022.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Monitoring; Dynamic contracts; Managerial compensation; Moral hazard; Endogenous financing constraints;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D86 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Economics of Contract Law
    • M52 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Compensation and Compensation Methods and Their Effects

    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:eee:jetheo:v:166:y:2016:i:c:p:242-281. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622869 .

    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.