IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/syb/wpbsba/2123-23549.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Robust Moral Hazard with Distributional Ambiguity

Author

Listed:
  • Li, Zhaolin

Abstract

We present a moral hazard model in which both the entrepreneur and investor face limited liability and employ a robust decision rule that maximizes their worst-case expected profit when distributional ambiguity exists. Applying strong duality, we reformulate the robust moral hazard model by introducing a new set of incentive compatibility constraints associated with choosing the most unfavourable distribution. We develop a one-step-ahead method using shadow prices for such probabilistic resources as mean and variance to characterize the robustly optimal contract and to improve the commonly used debt contract.

Suggested Citation

  • Li, Zhaolin, 2020. "Robust Moral Hazard with Distributional Ambiguity," Working Papers BAWP-2020-03, University of Sydney Business School, Discipline of Business Analytics.
    • Handle: RePEc:syb:wpbsba:2123/23549
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hdl.handle.net/2123/23549
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Vinicius Carrasco & Vitor Farinha Luz & Paulo K. Monteiro & Humberto Moreira, 2019. "Robust mechanisms: the curvature case," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 68(1), pages 203-222, July.
    2. Rogerson, William P, 1985. "The First-Order Approach to Principal-Agent Problems," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(6), pages 1357-1367, November.
    3. 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.
    4. Grossman, Sanford J & Hart, Oliver D, 1983. "An Analysis of the Principal-Agent Problem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 51(1), pages 7-45, January.
    5. 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.
    6. Joseph E. Stiglitz, 1974. "Incentives and Risk Sharing in Sharecropping," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 41(2), pages 219-255.
    7. Jewitt, Ian, 1988. "Justifying the First-Order Approach to Principal-Agent Problems," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(5), pages 1177-1190, September.
    8. Holmstrom, Bengt & Milgrom, Paul, 1991. "Multitask Principal-Agent Analyses: Incentive Contracts, Asset Ownership, and Job Design," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 7(0), pages 24-52, Special I.
    9. Spence, Michael & Zeckhauser, Richard, 1971. "Insurance, Information, and Individual Action," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 61(2), pages 380-387, May.
    10. Gabriel Carroll, 2019. "Robustness in Mechanism Design and Contracting," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 11(1), pages 139-166, August.
    11. 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.
    12. Garrett, Daniel F., 2014. "Robustness of simple menus of contracts in cost-based procurement," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 631-641.
    13. J. A. Mirrlees, 1999. "The Theory of Moral Hazard and Unobservable Behaviour: Part I," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 66(1), pages 3-21.
    14. Gabriel Carroll, 2015. "Robustness and Linear Contracts," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(2), pages 536-563, February.
    15. John R. Conlon, 2009. "Two New Conditions Supporting the First-Order Approach to Multisignal Principal-Agent Problems," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(1), pages 249-278, January.
    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. Ramsebner, J. & Haas, R. & Auer, H. & Ajanovic, A. & Gawlik, W. & Maier, C. & Nemec-Begluk, S. & Nacht, T. & Puchegger, M., 2021. "From single to multi-energy and hybrid grids: Historic growth and future vision," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 151(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. Balmaceda, Felipe & Balseiro, Santiago R. & Correa, José R. & Stier-Moses, Nicolás E., 2016. "Bounds on the welfare loss from moral hazard with limited liability," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 137-155.
    2. Li, Zhaolin, 2021. "Robust Moral Hazard with Distributional Ambiguity," Working Papers BAWP-2021-01, University of Sydney Business School, Discipline of Business Analytics.
    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. Malcomson James M, 2009. "Principal and Expert Agent," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 9(1), pages 1-36, May.
    5. Kadan, Ohad & Swinkels, Jeroen M., 2013. "On the moral hazard problem without the first-order approach," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(6), pages 2313-2343.
    6. James M. Malcomson, 2011. "Do Managers with Limited Liability Take More Risky Decisions? An Information Acquisition Model," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(1), pages 83-120, March.
    7. Rongzhu Ke & Xinyi Xu, 2023. "The existence of an optimal deterministic contract in moral hazard problems," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 76(2), pages 375-416, August.
    8. Raith, Michael, 2012. "Optimal incentives and the time dimension of performance measurement," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(6), pages 2158-2189.
    9. Fagart, Marie-Cécile & Fluet, Claude, 2013. "The first-order approach when the cost of effort is money," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 7-16.
    10. Mathias Dewatripont & Patrick Legros & Steven A. Matthews, 2003. "Moral Hazard and Capital Structure Dynamics," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 1(4), pages 890-930, June.
    11. Alex Edmans & Xavier Gabaix, 2016. "Executive Compensation: A Modern Primer," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 54(4), pages 1232-1287, December.
    12. Zhaolin Li & Samuel N. Kirshner, 2021. "Salesforce Compensation and Two‐Sided Ambiguity: Robust Moral Hazard with Moment Information," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 30(9), pages 2944-2961, September.
    13. Escobar, Juan F. & Pulgar, Carlos, 2017. "Motivating with simple contracts," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 192-214.
    14. Ábrahám, Árpád & Koehne, Sebastian & Pavoni, Nicola, 2011. "On the first-order approach in principal-agent models with hidden borrowing and lending," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(4), pages 1331-1361, July.
    15. Bond, Philip & Gomes, Armando, 2009. "Multitask principal-agent problems: Optimal contracts, fragility, and effort misallocation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(1), pages 175-211, January.
    16. Kirkegaard, René, 2017. "Moral hazard and the spanning condition without the first-order approach," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 373-387.
    17. Ingolf Dittmann & Ko-Chia Yu & Dan Zhang, 2017. "How Important Are Risk-Taking Incentives in Executive Compensation?," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 21(5), pages 1805-1846.
    18. Nicol'as Hern'andez Santib'a~nez & Dylan Possamai & Chao Zhou, 2017. "Bank monitoring incentives under moral hazard and adverse selection," Papers 1701.05864, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2019.
    19. Rosenthal, Maxwell, 2023. "Robust incentives for risk," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    20. Guillaume Roger, 2016. "A Revelation Mechanism for Soft Information under Moral Hazard," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 18(5), pages 752-763, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Debt contract; Moral hazard; Robust optimization;
    All these keywords.

    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:syb:wpbsba:2123/23549. 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: Artem Prokhorov (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sbsydau.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.