A firm faces random demand for a service it delivers on a given future date. To boost demand, the firm hires a sales agent who exerts unobservable effort continuously over time. The firm is concerned not only with increasing current demand, but also with smoothing demand over time to avoid...

A firm hires an agent (e.g., store manager) to undertake both operational and marketing tasks. Marketing tasks boost demand, but for demand to translate into sales, operational effort is required to maintain adequate inventory. The firm designs a compensation plan to induce the agent to put...

Diagnostic errors are prevalent and can result in severe patient harm. Identifying a correct diagnosis often necessitates significant diagnostic effort. Nonetheless, most physician payment schemes are procedure-based and do not account for diagnostic effort or accuracy, due to observability...

In a contest in which solvers with heterogeneous expertise exert effort to develop solutions, a recent paper (Terwiesch, C., Y. Xu. 2008. Innovation contests, open innovation and multiagent problem solving. Management Science. 54(9) 1529--1543) argues that as more solvers enter the contest,...