IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/emetrp/v88y2020i5p2075-2107.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Optimal Monitoring Design

Author

Listed:
  • George Georgiadis
  • Balazs Szentes

Abstract

This paper considers a Principal–Agent model with hidden action in which the Principal can monitor the Agent by acquiring independent signals conditional on effort at a constant marginal cost. The Principal aims to implement a target effort level at minimal cost. The main result of the paper is that the optimal information‐acquisition strategy is a two‐threshold policy and, consequently, the equilibrium contract specifies two possible wages for the Agent. This result provides a rationale for the frequently observed single‐bonus wage contracts.

Suggested Citation

  • George Georgiadis & Balazs Szentes, 2020. "Optimal Monitoring Design," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(5), pages 2075-2107, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:emetrp:v:88:y:2020:i:5:p:2075-2107
    DOI: 10.3982/ECTA16475
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA16475
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.3982/ECTA16475?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Patrick Bolton & Mathias Dewatripont, 2005. "Contract Theory," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262025760, December.
    2. Jonathan Levin, 2003. "Relational Incentive Contracts," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(3), pages 835-857, June.
    3. Canice Prendergast, 1999. "The Provision of Incentives in Firms," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(1), pages 7-63, March.
    4. Luis Rayo & Ilya Segal, 2010. "Optimal Information Disclosure," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(5), pages 949-987.
    5. Khalil Fahad & Lawarree Jacques, 1995. "Input versus Output Monitoring: Who Is the Residual Claimant?," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 139-157, June.
    6. James A. Mirrlees, 1976. "The Optimal Structure of Incentives and Authority Within an Organization," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 7(1), pages 105-131, Spring.
    7. Fabian Herweg & Daniel Muller & Philipp Weinschenk, 2010. "Binary Payment Schemes: Moral Hazard and Loss Aversion," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(5), pages 2451-2477, December.
    8. Holmstrom, Bengt & Milgrom, Paul, 1987. "Aggregation and Linearity in the Provision of Intertemporal Incentives," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(2), pages 303-328, March.
    9. Kim, Son Ku, 1995. "Efficiency of an Information System in an Agency Model," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 63(1), pages 89-102, January.
    10. Carrasco, Vinicius & Farinha Luz, Vitor & Kos, Nenad & Messner, Matthias & Monteiro, Paulo & Moreira, Humberto, 2018. "Optimal selling mechanisms under moment conditions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 177(C), pages 245-279.
    11. Baiman, S & Demski, Js, 1980. "Economically Optimal Performance Evaluation And Control-Systems," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18, pages 184-220.
    12. Palomino, Frederic & Prat, Andrea, 2003. "Risk Taking and Optimal Contracts for Money Managers," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 34(1), pages 113-137, Spring.
    13. 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.
    14. Laura Doval & Vasiliki Skreta, 2018. "Constrained Information Design," Papers 1811.03588, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2022.
    15. Srikant Datar & Susan Cohen Kulp & Richard A. Lambert, 2001. "Balancing Performance Measures," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(1), pages 75-92, June.
    16. Jewitt, Ian & Kadan, Ohad & Swinkels, Jeroen M., 2008. "Moral hazard with bounded payments," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 143(1), pages 59-82, November.
    17. Florian Hoffmann & Roman Inderst & Marcus Opp, 2021. "Only Time Will Tell: A Theory of Deferred Compensation [Motivating Innovation in Newly Public Firms]," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 88(3), pages 1253-1278.
    18. Oliver Hart & Bengt Holmstrom, 1986. "The Theory of Contracts," Working papers 418, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics.
    19. Gabriel Carroll, 2015. "Robustness and Linear Contracts," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(2), pages 536-563, February.
    20. Rogerson, William P, 1985. "Repeated Moral Hazard," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(1), pages 69-76, January.
    21. Ronald A. Dye, 1986. "Optimal Monitoring Policies in Agencies," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 17(3), pages 339-350, Autumn.
    22. Oyer, Paul, 2000. "A Theory of Sales Quotas with Limited Liability and Rent Sharing," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 18(3), pages 405-426, July.
    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. Gerardi, Dino & Grillo, Edoardo & Monzón, Ignacio, 2022. "The perils of friendly oversight," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 204(C).
    2. Paul Duetting & Michal Feldman & Inbal Talgam-Cohen, 2024. "Algorithmic Contract Theory: A Survey," Papers 2412.16384, arXiv.org.
    3. Cai, Dong & Zhang, Guoxing & Lai, Kee-hung & Guo, Chunxiang & Su, Bin, 2024. "Government incentive contract design for carbon reduction innovation considering market value under asymmetric information," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 186(C).
    4. Tan, Teck Yong, 2023. "Optimal transparency of monitoring capability," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 209(C).
    5. Kailin Chen, 2025. "Experiments in the Linear Convex Order," Papers 2502.06530, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2025.
    6. Vasudha Jain & Mark Whitmeyer, 2021. "Search and Competition with Flexible Investigations," Papers 2104.13159, arXiv.org.
    7. Jiadong Gu, 2024. "Data Trade and Consumer Privacy," Papers 2406.12457, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2024.
    8. Burkett, Justin & Rosenthal, Maxwell, 2024. "Statistical uncertainty and coarse contracts," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 220(C).
    9. Tal Alon & Paul Dutting & Yingkai Li & Inbal Talgam-Cohen, 2022. "Approximate Optimality of Linear Contracts Under Uncertainty," Papers 2211.06850, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2025.

    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. Georgiadis, George & Szentes, Balázs, 2020. "Optimal monitoring design," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 104062, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Barron, Daniel & Georgiadis, George & Swinkels, Jeroen M., 2020. "Optimal contracts with a risk-taking agent," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 15(2), May.
    3. Inés Macho-Stadler & David Pérez-Castrillo, 2018. "Moral hazard: Base models and two extensions," Chapters, in: Luis C. Corchón & Marco A. Marini (ed.), Handbook of Game Theory and Industrial Organization, Volume I, chapter 16, pages 453-485, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    4. Ulbricht, Robert, 2016. "Optimal delegated search with adverse selection and moral hazard," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 11(1), January.
    5. Andrea Repetto & Alejandro Jofré & Sofía Moroni, 2012. "Dynamic Contracts Under Loss Aversion," Working Papers wp_024, Adolfo Ibáñez University, School of Government.
    6. W. Bentley MacLeod, 2006. "Reputations, Relationships and the Enforcement of Incomplete Contracts," CESifo Working Paper Series 1730, CESifo.
    7. Hugo Hopenhayn & Arantxa Jarque, 2010. "Unobservable Persistent Productivity and Long Term Contracts," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 13(2), pages 333-349, April.
    8. Newman, Andrew F., 2007. "Risk-bearing and entrepreneurship," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 137(1), pages 11-26, November.
    9. Alberto Bayo-Moriones & Jose E. Galdon-Sanchez & Sara Martinez-de-Morentin, 2017. "Performance Measurement and Incentive Intensity," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 38(4), pages 496-546, December.
    10. González-Jiménez, Víctor, 2024. "Incentive design for reference-dependent preferences," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 221(C), pages 493-518.
    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. Holmstrom, Bengt R. & Tirole, Jean, 1989. "The theory of the firm," Handbook of Industrial Organization, in: R. Schmalensee & R. Willig (ed.), Handbook of Industrial Organization, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 2, pages 61-133, Elsevier.
    13. Lambert, Richard A., 2001. "Contracting theory and accounting," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1-3), pages 3-87, December.
    14. Alberto Bisin & Piero Gottardi & Adriano A. Rampini, 2008. "Managerial Hedging and Portfolio Monitoring," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 6(1), pages 158-209, March.
    15. Dionne, Georges & Harrington, Scott, 2017. "Insurance and Insurance Markets," Working Papers 17-2, HEC Montreal, Canada Research Chair in Risk Management.
    16. Fabian Herweg & Daniel Muller & Philipp Weinschenk, 2010. "Binary Payment Schemes: Moral Hazard and Loss Aversion," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(5), pages 2451-2477, December.
    17. Patrick Bolton & Neng Wang & Jinqiang Yang, 2016. "Liquidity and Risk Management: Coordinating Investment and Compensation Policies," 2016 Meeting Papers 1703, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    18. Bergmann, Rouven & Friedl, Gunther, 2008. "Controlling innovative projects with moral hazard and asymmetric information," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(9), pages 1504-1514, October.
    19. Sinclair-Desgagne, Bernard & Gabel, H. Landis, 1997. "Environmental Auditing in Management Systems and Public Policy," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 331-346, July.
    20. Lang, Matthias, 2019. "Communicating subjective evaluations," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 179(C), pages 163-199.

    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:wly:emetrp:v:88:y:2020:i:5:p:2075-2107. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/essssea.html .

    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.