IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/restud/v71y2004i2p397-424.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Strategic Delegation By Unobservable Incentive Contracts

Author

Listed:
  • Levent Koçkesen
  • Efe A. Ok

Abstract

Many strategic interactions in the real world take place among delegates empowered to act on behalf of others. Although there may be a multitude of reasons why delegation arises in reality, one intriguing possibility is that it yields a strategic advantage to the delegating party. In the case where only one party has the option to delegate, we analyse the possibility that strategic delegation arises as an equilibrium outcome under completely unobservable incentive contracts within the class of two-person extensive form games. We show that delegation may arise solely due to strategic reasons in quite general economic environments even under unobservable contracts. Furthermore, under some reasonable restrictions on out-of-equilibrium beliefs and actions of the outside party, strategic delegation is shown to be the only equilibrium outcome. Copyright 2004, Wiley-Blackwell.

Suggested Citation

  • Levent Koçkesen & Efe A. Ok, 2004. "Strategic Delegation By Unobservable Incentive Contracts," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 71(2), pages 397-424.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:restud:v:71:y:2004:i:2:p:397-424
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/0034-6527.00289
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    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. Brander, James A. & Lewis, Tracy R., 1986. "Oligopoly and Financial Structure: The Limited Liability Effect," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(5), pages 956-970, December.
    2. Mathias Dewatripont, 1988. "Commitment Through Renegotiation-Proof Contracts with Third Parties," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 55(3), pages 377-390.
    3. Cooper, Russell & Douglas V. DeJong & Robert Forsythe & Thomas W. Ross, 1993. "Forward Induction in the Battle-of-the-Sexes Games," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(5), pages 1303-1316, December.
    4. McLennan, Andrew, 1985. "Justifiable Beliefs in Sequential Equilibrium," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(4), pages 889-904, July.
    5. Michael L. Katz, 1991. "Game-Playing Agents: Unobservable Contracts as Precommitments," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 22(3), pages 307-328, Autumn.
    6. Jensen, Henrik, 1997. "Credibility of Optimal Monetary Delegation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(5), pages 911-920, December.
    7. Vickers, John, 1985. "Delegation and the Theory of the Firm," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 95(380a), pages 138-147, Supplemen.
    8. Levent Koçkesen & Efe A. Ok, 2004. "Strategic Delegation By Unobservable Incentive Contracts," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 71(2), pages 397-424.
    9. Caillaud, Bernard & Jullien, B & Picard, P, 1995. "Competing Vertical Structures: Precommitment and Renegotiation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 63(3), pages 621-646, May.
    10. Fershtman, Chaim & Judd, Kenneth L, 1987. "Equilibrium Incentives in Oligopoly," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(5), pages 927-940, December.
    11. Fershtman, Chaim & Gneezy, Uri, 2001. "Strategic Delegation: An Experiment," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 32(2), pages 352-368, Summer.
    12. Kohlberg, Elon & Mertens, Jean-Francois, 1986. "On the Strategic Stability of Equilibria," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 54(5), pages 1003-1037, September.
    13. Levent Koçkesen, 2007. "Unobservable Contracts as Precommitments," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 31(3), pages 539-552, June.
    14. van Damme, Eric, 1989. "Stable equilibria and forward induction," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 476-496, August.
    15. Steven D. Sklivas, 1987. "The Strategic Choice of Managerial Incentives," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 18(3), pages 452-458, Autumn.
    16. Brander, James A. & Spencer, Barbara J., 1985. "Export subsidies and international market share rivalry," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1-2), pages 83-100, February.
    17. Martin J. Osborne & Ariel Rubinstein, 1994. "A Course in Game Theory," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262650401, April.
    18. Segendorff, Bjorn, 1998. "Delegation and Threat in Bargaining," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 266-283, May.
    19. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 1993. "Designing institutions for monetary stability," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 53-84, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Emanuele Gerratana & Levent Koçkesen, 2015. "Commitment without reputation: renegotiation-proof contracts under asymmetric information," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 19(3), pages 173-209, September.
    2. Gerratana Emanuele & Koçkesen Levent, 2012. "Strategic Effects of Renegotiation-Proof Contracts," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 12(1), pages 1-49, July.
    3. Fershtman, Chaim & Kalai, Ehud, 1997. "Unobserved Delegation," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 38(4), pages 763-774, November.
    4. Michael L. Katz, 2006. "Observable Contracts as Commitments: Interdependent Contracts and Moral Hazard," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(3), pages 685-706, September.
    5. Emanuele Gerratana & Levent Kockesen, 2012. "Renegotiation-Proof Third-Party Contracts under Asymmetric Information," Koç University-TUSIAD Economic Research Forum Working Papers 1208, Koc University-TUSIAD Economic Research Forum.
    6. Caillaud, Bernard & Rey, Patrick, 1995. "Strategic aspects of vertical delegation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 39(3-4), pages 421-431, April.
    7. Esther Gal‐Or, 1997. "Multiprincipal Agency Relationships as Implied by Product Market Competition," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 6(1), pages 235-256, June.
    8. Polo, Michele & Tedeschi, Piero, 2000. "Delegation games and side-contracting," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 101-116, March.
    9. Spagnolo, Giancarlo, 1998. "Debt as a (Credible) Collusive Device, or: "Everybody Happy but the Consumer"," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 243, Stockholm School of Economics, revised 01 Aug 2004.
    10. Aghion, Philippe & Dewatripont, Mathias & Legros, Patrick & Zingales, Luigi (ed.), 2016. "The Impact of Incomplete Contracts on Economics," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199826216.
    11. Levent Koçkesen & Emanuele Gerratana, 2008. "Delegation with Incomplete and Renegotiable Contracts," Koç University-TUSIAD Economic Research Forum Working Papers 0803., Koc University-TUSIAD Economic Research Forum.
    12. Michel Cavagnac, 2005. "Strategic managerial incentives under adverse selection," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(8), pages 499-512.
    13. Walter A Cont, 2001. "Essays on Contract Design: Delegation and Agency Problems, and Monitoring Under Collusion," Levine's Working Paper Archive 625018000000000122, David K. Levine.
    14. Hongbin Cai & Walter Cont, 2004. "Agency Problems and Commitment in Delegated Bargaining," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 13(4), pages 703-729, December.
    15. Miettinen, Topi & Stenbacka, Rune, 2018. "Strategic short-termism: Implications for the management and acquisition of customer relationships," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 153(C), pages 200-222.
    16. Xiong, Yan & Jiang, Xu, 2022. "Economic consequences of managerial compensation contract disclosure," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(2).
    17. repec:bla:jecsur:v:12:y:1998:i:4:p:333-59 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Marco Pagnozzi & Salvatore Piccolo, 2012. "Vertical Separation with Private Contracts," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 122(559), pages 173-207, March.
    19. Ritz, Robert A., 2008. "Strategic incentives for market share," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 586-597, March.
    20. Guido Merzoni, 2008. "Observable and Renegotiable Contracts as Commitments to Cooperate," DISEIS - Quaderni del Dipartimento di Economia internazionale, delle istituzioni e dello sviluppo dis0801, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimento di Economia internazionale, delle istituzioni e dello sviluppo (DISEIS).
    21. Patrick Legros & Andrew F. Newman, 2014. "Contracts, Ownership, and Industrial Organization: Past and Future," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 30(suppl_1), pages 82-117.

    More about this item

    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:oup:restud:v:71:y:2004:i:2:p:397-424. 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/restud .

    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.