IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/trf/wpaper/462.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Optimal Delegated Search with Adverse Selection and Moral Hazard

Author

Listed:
  • Ulbricht, Robert

Abstract

The paper studies a model of delegated search. The distribution of search revenues is unknown to the principal and has to be elicited from the agent in order to design the optimal search policy. At the same time, the search process is unobservable, requiring search to be self-enforcing. The two information asymmetries are mutually enforcing each other; if one is relaxed, delegated search is efficient. With both asymmetries prevailing simultaneously, search is almost surely inefficient (it is stopped too early). Second-best remuneration is shown to optimally utilize a menu of simple bonus contracts. In contrast to standard adverse selection problems, indirect nonlinear tariffs are strictly dominated.

Suggested Citation

  • Ulbricht, Robert, 2014. "Optimal Delegated Search with Adverse Selection and Moral Hazard," Discussion Paper Series of SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems 462, Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Bonn, University of Mannheim, University of Munich.
    • Handle: RePEc:trf:wpaper:462
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/20865/1/462.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Toxvaerd, Flavio, 2006. "Time of the essence," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 129(1), pages 252-272, July.
    2. Patrick Bolton & Mathias Dewatripont, 2005. "Contract Theory," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262025760, April.
    3. Steven D. Levitt & Chad Syverson, 2008. "Market Distortions When Agents Are Better Informed: The Value of Information in Real Estate Transactions," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 90(4), pages 599-611, November.
    4. 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.
    5. 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.
    6. 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.
    7. Rutherford, R.C. & Springer, T.M. & Yavas, A., 2005. "Conflicts between principals and agents: evidence from residential brokerage," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(3), pages 627-665, June.
    8. R. Preston McAfee & John McMillan, 1987. "Competition for Agency Contracts," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 18(2), pages 296-307, Summer.
    9. Olivier Compte & Philippe Jehiel, 2010. "Bargaining and Majority Rules: A Collective Search Perspective," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(2), pages 189-221, April.
    10. 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.
    11. Albrecht, James & Anderson, Axel & Vroman, Susan, 2010. "Search by committee," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 145(4), pages 1386-1407, July.
    12. Yuliy Sannikov, 2008. "A Continuous-Time Version of the Principal-Agent Problem," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 75(3), pages 957-984.
    13. Jean-Jacques Laffont & Jean Tirole, 1993. "A Theory of Incentives in Procurement and Regulation," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262121743, April.
    14. J. A. Mirrlees, 1971. "An Exploration in the Theory of Optimum Income Taxation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 38(2), pages 175-208.
    15. Holmstrom, Bengt & Milgrom, Paul, 1987. "Aggregation and Linearity in the Provision of Intertemporal Incentives," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(2), pages 303-328, March.
    16. Mortensen, Dale T, 1970. "Job Search, the Duration of Unemployment, and the Phillips Curve," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 60(5), pages 847-862, December.
    17. Bengt Holmstrom, 1979. "Moral Hazard and Observability," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 10(1), pages 74-91, Spring.
    18. 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.
    19. George A. Akerlof, 1970. "The Market for "Lemons": Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 84(3), pages 488-500.
    20. Park, Eun-Soo, 1995. "Incentive Contracting under Limited Liability," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 4(3), pages 477-490, Fall.
    21. 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. Florian Englmaier & Stefan Grimm & Dominik Grothe & David Schindler & Simeon Schudy, 2024. "The Effect of Incentives in Nonroutine Analytical Team Tasks," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 132(8), pages 2695-2747.
    2. Mauring, Eeva, 2016. "A two-agent model of sequential search and choice," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 122-137.
    3. MohammadTaghi Hajiaghayi & Keivan Rezaei & Suho Shin, 2023. "Delegating to Multiple Agents," Papers 2305.03203, arXiv.org, revised May 2023.
    4. Foucart, Renaud, 2020. "Metasearch and market concentration," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    5. Elnaz Bajoori & Julia Wirtz, 2022. "Optimal delegated search with learning and nomonetary transfers," Bristol Economics Discussion Papers 22/768, School of Economics, University of Bristol, UK.
    6. Xi Chen & Yu Chen & Xuhu Wan, 2018. "Delegated Project Search," Graz Economics Papers 2018-11, University of Graz, Department of Economics.

    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. 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.
    2. George Georgiadis & Balazs Szentes, 2020. "Optimal Monitoring Design," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(5), pages 2075-2107, September.
    3. 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.
    4. Quintero Jaramillo, Jose E., 2004. "Liquidity constraints and credit subsidies in auctions," DEE - Working Papers. Business Economics. WB wb040604, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía de la Empresa.
    5. 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.
    6. Hooper, Louise, 2008. "Paying for performance: Uncertainty, asymmetric information and the payment model," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 157-163, January.
    7. Leon Yang Chu & David E.M. Sappington, 2009. "Implementing high‐powered contracts to motivate intertemporal effort supply," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 40(2), pages 296-316, June.
    8. Imhof, Lorens & Kräkel, Matthias, 2014. "Bonus pools and the informativeness principle," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 180-191.
    9. Alex Edmans & Xavier Gabaix, 2016. "Executive Compensation: A Modern Primer," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 54(4), pages 1232-1287, December.
    10. Melumad, Nahum D. & Reichelstein, Stefan, 1989. "Value of communication in agencies," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 334-368, April.
    11. Patrick Bolton & Neng Wang & Jinqiang Yang, 2016. "Liquidity and Risk Management: Coordinating Investment and Compensation Policies," 2016 Meeting Papers 1703, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    12. 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.
    13. Tinglong Dai & Kinshuk Jerath, 2019. "Salesforce Contracting Under Uncertain Demand and Supply: Double Moral Hazard and Optimality of Smooth Contracts," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 38(5), pages 852-870, September.
    14. 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.
    15. W. Bentley MacLeod, 2006. "Reputations, Relationships and the Enforcement of Incomplete Contracts," CESifo Working Paper Series 1730, CESifo.
    16. Mathias Dewatripont & Patrick Legros, 2005. "Public-private partnerships: contract design and risk transfer," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/175947, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    17. Conning, Jonathan & Udry, Christopher, 2007. "Rural Financial Markets in Developing Countries," Handbook of Agricultural Economics, in: Robert Evenson & Prabhu Pingali (ed.), Handbook of Agricultural Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 56, pages 2857-2908, Elsevier.
    18. Athreya, Kartik B., 2014. "Big Ideas in Macroeconomics: A Nontechnical View," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262019736, April.
    19. 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.
    20. 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.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    adverse selection; bonus contracts; delegated search; moral hazard; optimal stopping.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • D86 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Economics of Contract Law
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games

    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:trf:wpaper:462. 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: Tamilla Benkelberg (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.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.