The System of Incentives for Managers with Multitasks : Theory and Evidence from Chinese State-Owned Enterprises

The multitask principal-agent theory argues that incentive devices for the agent tend to be complementary due to the need for balanced allocation of effort among the tasks. A growing body of empirical literature appears to support this notion. However, when there can be several signals for each of the tasks, incentive devices based on individual signals for each task can be complements or substitutes for one another. This paper studies the complementarity and substitutability theoretically and empirically. The theoretical study extends the framework of Holmstrom and Milgrom (1994) to incorporate the case of multiple signals for some tasks. The empirical work is based on a rich panel data set of managerial incentives from more than 300 Chinese state-owned enterprises. The empirical findings support most of the theoretical predictions but also suggest that profits are not the only objective of the Chinese government (the principal) in designing managerial contracts. Our findings about the determinants of the incentive devices offer support to some notions in the agency theory and the literature on incomplete contracts. state-owned enterprises