This paper studies how social relationships between managers and employees affect relational incentive contracts. To this end we develop a simple dynamic principal-agent model where both players may have feelings of altruism or spite toward each other. The contract may contain two types of...

We study how different payment modes inuence the effectiveness of gift exchange as a contract enforcement device. In particular, we analyze how horizontal fairness concerns affect performance and efficiency in an environment characterized by contractual incompleteness. In our experiment, one...

We formalize a conception of authority, which is commonly defined as the right of controlling a person’s actions embedded in human assets in sociology. Due to the inalienable property of human assets, the contractible formal authority is hard to verify and enforce, while real authority usually...

This paper proposes that the introduction of non-redundant assets can endogenously modify trader participation in financial markets, which can lead to a lower market premium and a higher interest rate. We demonstrate this mechanism in a tractable exchange economy with endogenous participation....

This paper studies how social relationships between managers and employees affect relational incentive contracts. To this end we develop a simple dynamic principal-agent model where both players may have feelings of altruism or spite toward each other. The contract may contain two types of...

This paper views authority as the right to undertake decisions that impose externalities on other members of the organization. When only decision rights can be contractually assigned to one of the organization's stakeholders, the optimal assignment minimizes the resulting inefficiencies by...

We show experimentally that a principal?s distrust in the voluntary performance of an agent has a negative impact on the agent?s motivation to perform well. Before the agent chooses his performance, the principal in our experiment decides whether he wants to restrict the agents? choice set by...

This paper offers a rationale for limiting the delegation of (real) authority, which neither relies on insurance arguments nor depends on ownership structure. We analyse a repeated hidden action model in which the actions of a risk neutral agent determine his future outside option. Consequently,...

This paper studies a partial-contracting model where an agent may provide effort to increase a project's scope before some later decisions have to be taken. Consistent with existing empirical evidence, we find a positive relationship between exogenous risk and delegation. That is, we show that...