In standard principal-agent problems, the issue at hand is how to align the interests of the agent with those of her principal. A commonly used contract involves the principal paying the agent a percentage of the sale price as commission. With respect to real estate brokerage conracts, it has...

Previous research (Rutherford et al., 2005; Levitt and Syverson, 2005) identify and quantify agency problems in the brokerage of single-family houses. Real estate agents are found to receive a premium when sellling their own houses in comparison to similar client-owned houses. Given the homogeneity...