We model situations in which a principal offers contracts to a group of agents to participate in a project. Agents' benefits from participation depend on the identity of other participating agents. We assume heterogeneous externalities and characterize the optimal contracting scheme. We show...

In this paper we analyze a principal's optimal monitoring strategies in a team environment. In doing so we study the interaction between formal monitoring and informal (peer) monitoring. We show that if the technology satisfies complementarity, peer monitoring substitutes for the principal's...

By incentive reversal we refer to situations in which an increase in rewards for all agents results in fewer agents exerting effort. We show that externalities among peers may give rise to such intriguing situations even when all agents are fully rational. We provide a necessary and sufficient...