This paper examines the effect of imperfect labor market competition on the efficiency of compensation schemes in a setting with moral hazard and risk-averse agents, who have private information on their productivity. Two vertically differentiated firms compete for agents by offering contracts...

We conduct a laboratory experiment with agents working on and principals benefiting from a real effort task in which the agents' effort/performance can only be evaluated subjectively. Principals give subjective performance feedback to agents and agents have an opportunity to sanction principals....

We show that individuals' desire to protect their self-esteem against ego-threatening feedback can mitigate moral hazard in environments with purely subjective performance evaluations. In line with evidence from social psychology we assume that agents' react aggressively to evaluations by the...

As we have demonstrated in a recent laboratory experiment [see Sebald and Walzl (2012)], individuals tend to sanction others who subjectively evaluate their performance whenever this assessment falls short of the individual's self-evaluation even if their earnings are unaffected by the...

We conduct a laboratory experiment with agents working on and principals benefitting from a real effort task in which the agents' performance can only be evaluated subjectively. Principals give subjective performance feedback to agents and agents have an opportunity to sanction principals. In...

This paper examines the effect of imperfect labor market competition on the efficiency of compensation schemes in a setting with moral hazard and risk-averse agents, who have private information on their productivity. Two vertically differentiated firms compete for agents by offering contracts...

We analyze a principal agent model with hidden action, limited liability and truth-telling constraints under the assumption that the principal has private information. We focus on whether the principal should reveal his private information to the agent. On the one hand, revelation allows to...

We analyze a model of delegated expertise with limited liability where both the agent's effort and his findings are unobservable. We show that the latter assumption reduces the agent's effort and the principal's profit in the unique subgame perfect equilibrium. Most interestingly, the...

We derive the optimal contract in a model in which the agent's effort is unobservable and his findings are private information. Our focus is on the impact of the agent's wealth constraint. We show that three regions need to be distinguished: if the agent's wealth is above a critical threshold,...