We characterize a firm's profit-maximizing turnover policy in an environment where managerial productivity changes stochastically over time and is the manager's private information. Our key positive result shows that the productivity level that the …firm requires for retention declines with the...

We characterize the optimal incentive scheme for a manager who faces costly effort decisions and whose ability to generate profits for the firm varies stochastically over time. The optimal contract is obtained as the solution to a dynamic mechanism design problem with hidden actions and...

Contracts adopted with later renegotiation in mind may take simple forms. In a principal-agent model, if renegotiation may occur after the agent chooses efforet, the principal protects against unfavorable renegotiation by "selling the project" to the agent via a sales contract. If only singleton...

Sales contracts emerge when a principal and an agent in amoral hazard environment cannot prevent themselves from renegotiating their contract. The renegotiation occurs after the agent chooses his unobservable effort, but before its consequences are realized. Unlike previous analyses, a contract...

This paper shows in two ways that the degree to which free-riding diminishes the performance of deterministic partnerships may be less than has been generally thought. First, a necessary and sufficient condition is provided for a partnership to sustain full efficiency. It implies that many...

We study the optimal dynamics of incentives for a manager whose ability to generate cash ows changes stochastically with time and is his private information. We show that, in general, the power of incentives (or "pay for performance") may either increase or decrease with tenure. However, risk...