IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2211.06850.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Bayesian Analysis of Linear Contracts

Author

Listed:
  • Tal Alon
  • Paul Dutting
  • Yingkai Li
  • Inbal Talgam-Cohen

Abstract

We provide a justification for the prevalence of linear (commission-based) contracts in practice under the Bayesian framework. We consider a hidden-action principal-agent model, in which actions require different amounts of effort, and the agent's cost per-unit-of-effort is private. We show that linear contracts are near-optimal whenever there is sufficient uncertainty in the principal-agent setting.

Suggested Citation

  • Tal Alon & Paul Dutting & Yingkai Li & Inbal Talgam-Cohen, 2022. "Bayesian Analysis of Linear Contracts," Papers 2211.06850, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2023.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2211.06850
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2211.06850
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paul Milgrom & Ilya Segal, 2002. "Envelope Theorems for Arbitrary Choice Sets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(2), pages 583-601, March.
    2. Grossman, Sanford J & Hart, Oliver D, 1983. "An Analysis of the Principal-Agent Problem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 51(1), pages 7-45, January.
    3. Georgiadis, George & Szentes, Balázs, 2020. "Optimal monitoring design," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 104062, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    4. Holmstrom, Bengt & Milgrom, Paul, 1987. "Aggregation and Linearity in the Provision of Intertemporal Incentives," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(2), pages 303-328, March.
    5. Osband, Kent, 1989. "Optimal Forecasting Incentives," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(5), pages 1091-1112, October.
    6. Jeffrey C. Ely & Martin Szydlowski, 2020. "Moving the Goalposts," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 128(2), pages 468-506.
    7. Myerson, Roger B. & Satterthwaite, Mark A., 1983. "Efficient mechanisms for bilateral trading," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 265-281, April.
    8. Aubrey Clark & Giovanni Reggiani, 2021. "Contracts for acquiring information," Papers 2103.03911, arXiv.org.
    9. Gabriel Carroll, 2015. "Robustness and Linear Contracts," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(2), pages 536-563, February.
    10. Gottlieb, Daniel & Moreira, Humberto, 2022. "Simple contracts with adverse selection and moral hazard," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 17(3), July.
    11. Hart, Sergiu & Nisan, Noam, 2019. "Selling multiple correlated goods: Revenue maximization and menu-size complexity," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 183(C), pages 991-1029.
    12. George Georgiadis & Balazs Szentes, 2020. "Optimal Monitoring Design," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(5), pages 2075-2107, September.
    13. Daniel Walton & Gabriel Carroll, 2022. "A General Framework for Robust Contracting Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 90(5), pages 2129-2159, September.
    14. Gottlieb, Daniel & Moreira, Humberto, 2022. "Simple contracts with adverse selection and moral hazard," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 114348, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    15. Marina Halac & Navin Kartik & Qingmin Liu, 2016. "Optimal Contracts for Experimentation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 83(3), pages 1040-1091.
    16. Roger B. Myerson, 1981. "Optimal Auction Design," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 6(1), pages 58-73, February.
    17. Kai Hao Yang, 2022. "Selling Consumer Data for Profit: Optimal Market-Segmentation Design and Its Consequences," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 112(4), pages 1364-1393, April.
    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. Vu, Anh Ngoc, 2023. "Demand reduction campaigns for the illegal wildlife trade in authoritarian Vietnam: Ungrounded environmentalism," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 164(C).

    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. Escobar, Juan F. & Pulgar, Carlos, 2017. "Motivating with simple contracts," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 192-214.
    2. Hector Chade, 2017. "Disentangling Moral Hazard and Adverse Selection," 2017 Meeting Papers 1537, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    3. Samuel Häfner & Curtis R. Taylor, 2022. "On young Turks and yes men: optimal contracting for advice," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 53(1), pages 63-94, March.
    4. Martin Dumav, 2021. "Moral Hazard, Dynamic Incentives, and Ambiguous Perceptions," Papers 2110.15229, arXiv.org.
    5. Felipe Balmaceda, 2020. "Contracting with moral hazard, adverse selection and risk neutrality: when does one size fit all?," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 49(2), pages 601-637, June.
    6. Aubrey Clark & Giovanni Reggiani, 2021. "Contracts for acquiring information," Papers 2103.03911, arXiv.org.
    7. Kos, Nenad & Messner, Matthias, 2013. "Extremal incentive compatible transfers," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(1), pages 134-164.
    8. Jesse A. Schwartz & Quan Wen, 2008. "A Revelation Principle for Dominant Strategy Implementation," Vanderbilt University Department of Economics Working Papers 0819, Vanderbilt University Department of Economics.
    9. Kazumura, Tomoya & Mishra, Debasis & Serizawa, Shigehiro, 2020. "Mechanism design without quasilinearity," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 15(2), May.
    10. Garrett, Daniel F. & Georgiadis, George & Smolin, Alex & Szentes, Balázs, 2023. "Optimal technology design," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 209(C).
    11. Jean Tirole, 2016. "From Bottom of the Barrel to Cream of the Crop: Sequential Screening With Positive Selection," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 84(4), pages 1291-1343, July.
    12. Jiadong Gu, 2024. "Data Trade and Consumer Privacy," Papers 2406.12457, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2024.
    13. Matsushima, Hitoshi & Noda, Shunya, 2023. "Mechanism design with general ex-ante investments," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    14. X. Ruiz del Portal, 2012. "Conditions for incentive compatibility in models with multidimensional allocation functions and one-dimensional types," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 16(4), pages 311-321, December.
    15. Peter Zhang, 2023. "Distributionally Robust Principal-Agent Problems and Optimality of Contracts," Papers 2303.07468, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2024.
    16. Zhongmiao Sun & Qi Xu & Jinrong Liu, 2023. "Dynamic Incentive Contract of Government for Port Enterprises to Reduce Emissions in the Blockchain Era: Considering Carbon Trading Policy," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(16), pages 1-40, August.
    17. Hitoshi Matsushima, 2018. "Optimal Deterministic Mechanism Design: Type-Independent Preference Orderings," The Japanese Economic Review, Springer, vol. 69(4), pages 363-373, December.
    18. Mohammad Akbarpour & Shengwu Li, 2020. "Credible Auctions: A Trilemma," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(2), pages 425-467, March.
    19. Rosenthal, Maxwell, 2023. "Robust incentives for risk," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    20. Tobias Widmer & Paul Karaenke & Vijayan Sugumaran, 2021. "Two‐sided service markets: Effects of quality differentiation on market efficiency," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(3), pages 588-604, April.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:arx:papers:2211.06850. 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: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    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.