We derive a natural definition of responsibility in a formal model where employees care for their career prospects: A superior holds a subordinate responsible for a task, when she announces her beliefs that this subordinate contributes most to this task. We show, that those announced beliefs...

We derive a natural definition of responsibility in a formal model where employees care for their career prospects: A superior holds a subordinate responsible for a task, when she announced her beliefs that this subordinate contributes most to this task. We show, that those announced beliefs...

Two alternative relative compensation schemes are compared with respect to total output that can be generated at a given sum of salaries. While the promotion regime guarantees that any salary increase is permanent, the premium system allows a reduction in the income of an agent to the base...

This paper studies a principal-agent relation in which the principal's private information about the agent's effort choice is more accurate than a noisy public performance measure. For some contingencies the optimal contract has to specify ex post inefficiencies in the form of inefficient...

It is often claimed that (i) managers work too hard on operational issues and do not spend enough effort on strategic activities and (ii) something can be done about this by introducing nonfinancial performance measures as for instance with a balanced scorecard. We give an explanation for both...

In an asymmetric tournament model with endogenous risk choice by the agents it is shown that equilibrium efforts decrease (increase) with risk if abilities are sufficiently similar (different). Risk also affects winning probabilities. The interaction of both effects is analyzed.

We analyze the Moral Hazard problem, assuming that agents are inequity averse. Our results differ from conventional contract theory and are more in line with empirical findings than standard results. We find: First, inequity aversion alters the structure of optimal contracts. Second, there is a...

We revisit the question of how performance measures are used to evaluate business unit managers in response to intra-firm spillovers because prior studies have documented conflicting empirical evidence. Specifically, we are interested in variation in the relative incentive weightings of...

We consider a relational contracting model in which the parties choose to allocate authority either to the principal (centralization) or to the agent (delegation). The party who has authority chooses a project, and the agent exerts effort to successfully execute the project. Delegation generates...

Braun (this issue) argues that the traditional accounting principles underlying the revenue-expense approach such as Historical Cost and Conservatism are ecologically rational in that they help organizations survive better in uncertain economic environments. More importantly, he argues that the...