IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/114348.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Simple contracts with adverse selection and moral hazard

Author

Listed:
  • Gottlieb, Daniel
  • Moreira, Humberto

Abstract

We study a principal-agent model with moral hazard and adverse selection. Risk-neutral agents with limited liability have arbitrary private information about the distribution of outputs and the cost of effort. We show that under a multiplicative separability condition, the optimal mechanism offers a single contract. This condition holds, for example, when output is binary. If the principal’s payoff must also satisfy free disposal and the distribution of outputs has the monotone likelihood ratio property, the mechanism offers a single debt contract. Our results generalize if the output distribution is “close” to multiplicatively separable. Our model suggests that offering a single contract may be optimal in environments with adverse selection and moral hazard when agents are risk neutral and have limited liability.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:114348
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/114348/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bajari, Patrick & Tadelis, Steven, 2001. "Incentives versus Transaction Costs: A Theory of Procurement Contracts," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 32(3), pages 387-407, Autumn.
    2. Joaquín Poblete & Daniel Spulber, 2012. "The form of incentive contracts: agency with moral hazard, risk neutrality, and limited liability," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 43(2), pages 215-234, June.
    3. Bolton, Patrick & Scharfstein, David S, 1990. "A Theory of Predation Based on Agency Problems in Financial Contracting," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(1), pages 93-106, March.
    4. John Riley & Richard Zeckhauser, 1983. "Optimal Selling Strategies: When to Haggle, When to Hold Firm," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 98(2), pages 267-289.
    5. Dewatripont,Mathias & Hansen,Lars Peter & Turnovsky,Stephen J. (ed.), 2003. "Advances in Economics and Econometrics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521818728, November.
    6. Bruno Biais & Thomas Mariotti, 2005. "Strategic Liquidity Supply and Security Design," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 72(3), pages 615-649.
    7. Laffont, Jean-Jacques & Tirole, Jean, 1986. "Using Cost Observation to Regulate Firms," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(3), pages 614-641, June.
    8. Bengt Holmstrom, 1979. "Moral Hazard and Observability," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 10(1), pages 74-91, Spring.
    9. Dirk Bergemann & Stephen Morris, 2012. "Robust Mechanism Design," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Robust Mechanism Design The Role of Private Information and Higher Order Beliefs, chapter 2, pages 49-96, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    10. Innes, Robert D., 1990. "Limited liability and incentive contracting with ex-ante action choices," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 52(1), pages 45-67, October.
    11. Andrea Attar & Thomas Mariotti & François Salanié, 2011. "Nonexclusive Competition in the Market for Lemons," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 79(6), pages 1869-1918, November.
    12. Peter M. DeMarzo & Ilan Kremer & Andrzej Skrzypacz, 2005. "Bidding with Securities: Auctions and Security Design," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 936-959, September.
    13. Dewatripont,Mathias & Hansen,Lars Peter & Turnovsky,Stephen J. (ed.), 2003. "Advances in Economics and Econometrics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521524131, November.
    14. Burguet, Roberto & Ganuza, Juan-José & Hauk, Esther, 2012. "Limited liability and mechanism design in procurement," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 76(1), pages 15-25.
    15. Peter M. DeMarzo, 2005. "The Pooling and Tranching of Securities: A Model of Informed Intermediation," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 18(1), pages 1-35.
    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. Jean-Charles Rochet & Lars A. Stole, 2002. "Nonlinear Pricing with Random Participation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 69(1), pages 277-311.
    18. Castro-Pires, Henrique & Moreira, Humberto, 2021. "Limited liability and non-responsiveness in agency models," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 73-103.
    19. 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.
    20. Gabriel Carroll, 2019. "Robustness in Mechanism Design and Contracting," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 11(1), pages 139-166, August.
    21. William P. Rogerson, 2003. "Simple Menus of Contracts in Cost-Based Procurement and Regulation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(3), pages 919-926, June.
    22. Chade, Hector & Schlee, Edward E., 2020. "Insurance as a lemons market: Coverage denials and pooling," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).
    23. Dewatripont,Mathias & Hansen,Lars Peter & Turnovsky,Stephen J. (ed.), 2003. "Advances in Economics and Econometrics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521818742, November.
    24. Dewatripont,Mathias & Hansen,Lars Peter & Turnovsky,Stephen J. (ed.), 2003. "Advances in Economics and Econometrics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521524117, January.
    25. Picard, Pierre, 1987. "On the design of incentive schemes under moral hazard and adverse selection," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 305-331, August.
    26. Melumad, Nahum D. & Reichelstein, Stefan, 1989. "Value of communication in agencies," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 334-368, April.
    27. Peter DeMarzo & Darrell Duffie, 1999. "A Liquidity-Based Model of Security Design," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 67(1), pages 65-100, January.
    28. Ollier, Sandrine & Thomas, Lionel, 2013. "Ex post participation constraint in a principal–agent model with adverse selection and moral hazard," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(6), pages 2383-2403.
    29. Matthews, Steven A., 2001. "Renegotiating Moral Hazard Contracts under Limited Liability and Monotonicity," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 97(1), pages 1-29, March.
    30. Guesnerie, Roger & Laffont, Jean-Jacques, 1984. "A complete solution to a class of principal-agent problems with an application to the control of a self-managed firm," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 329-369, December.
    31. Nachman, David C & Noe, Thomas H, 1994. "Optimal Design of Securities under Asymmetric Information," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 7(1), pages 1-44.
    32. Dewatripont,Mathias & Hansen,Lars Peter & Turnovsky,Stephen J. (ed.), 2003. "Advances in Economics and Econometrics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521818735, November.
    33. Dewatripont,Mathias & Hansen,Lars Peter & Turnovsky,Stephen J. (ed.), 2003. "Advances in Economics and Econometrics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521524124, November.
    34. Faure-Grimaud, Antoine & Mariotti, Thomas, 1999. "Optimal debt contracts and the single-crossing condition," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 85-89, October.
    35. 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.
    36. Leon Yang Chu & David E. M. Sappington, 2007. "Simple Cost-Sharing Contracts," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(1), pages 419-428, March.
    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. 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.
    2. Tal Alon & Paul Dutting & Yingkai Li & Inbal Talgam-Cohen, 2022. "Bayesian Analysis of Linear Contracts," Papers 2211.06850, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2023.

    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. Scheuer, Florian, 2013. "Adverse selection in credit markets and regressive profit taxation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(4), pages 1333-1360.
    2. Stenzel, André, 2018. "Security design with interim public information," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 113-130.
    3. Dirk Bergemann & Alessandro Pavan, 2015. "Introduction to JET Symposium Issue on "Dynamic Contracts and Mechanism Design"," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 2016, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    4. Donaldson, Jason Roderick & Piacentino, Giorgia & Thakor, Anjan, 2018. "Warehouse banking," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 129(2), pages 250-267.
    5. Alan Moreira & Alexi Savov, 2014. "The Macroeconomics of Shadow Banking," NBER Working Papers 20335, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Kohei Daido & Takeshi Murooka, 2016. "Team Incentives and Reference‐Dependent Preferences," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(4), pages 958-989, December.
    7. Kohei Daido & Takeshi Murooka, 2013. "Loss Aversion, Stochastic Compensation, and Team Incentives," Discussion Paper Series 107, School of Economics, Kwansei Gakuin University, revised Jul 2013.
    8. Li, Zhaolin & Shao, Lusheng, 2015. "Time-based procurement," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 350-361.
    9. Khaled Diaw & Jérôme Pouyet, 2005. "Information, competition and (In) complete discrimination," Working Papers hal-00243025, HAL.
    10. 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.
    11. Dang, Viet Anh, 2010. "Optimal financial contracts with hidden effort, unobservable profits and endogenous costs of effort," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 75-89, February.
    12. Stephen Morris & Ming Yang, 2016. "Coordination and the Relative Cost of Distinguishing Nearby States," Working Papers 079_2016, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Econometric Research Program..
    13. David Rietzke & Yu Chen, 2020. "Push or pull? Performance‐pay, incentives, and information," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 51(1), pages 301-317, March.
    14. Manelli, Alejandro M. & Vincent, Daniel R., 2007. "Multidimensional mechanism design: Revenue maximization and the multiple-good monopoly," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 137(1), pages 153-185, November.
    15. Beck Thorsten & Büyükkarabacak Berrak & Rioja Felix K. & Valev Neven T., 2012. "Who Gets the Credit? And Does It Matter? Household vs. Firm Lending Across Countries," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 12(1), pages 1-46, March.
    16. Barelli, Paulo & Basov, Suren & Bugarin, Mauricio & King, Ian King, 2010. "The Inclusiveness of Exclusion," Insper Working Papers wpe_211, Insper Working Paper, Insper Instituto de Ensino e Pesquisa.
    17. Araujo, Aloisio & Moreira, Humberto, 2010. "Adverse selection problems without the Spence-Mirrlees condition," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 145(3), pages 1113-1141, May.
    18. Inderst, Roman & Peitz, Martin, 2012. "Informing consumers about their own preferences," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 30(5), pages 417-428.
    19. Paulo Barelli & Suren Basov & Mauricio Bugarin & Ian King, 2012. "The Robustness of Exclusion in Multi-dimensional Screening," RCER Working Papers 571, University of Rochester - Center for Economic Research (RCER).
    20. Brunnermeier, Markus & Abadi, Joseph, 2018. "Blockchain Economics," CEPR Discussion Papers 13420, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    principal-agent problem; contract theory; mechanism design;
    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

    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:ehl:lserod:114348. 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: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.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.