I study the implications of agency frictions for the pricing policy of institutional market makers. In a setting where a market maker cannot observe the actions of an employed trader, I derive the optimal compensation structure and pricing policy. The theory demonstrates that incentive...

Abstract: Many incentive plans do not include an explicit mapping between workers’ performance and compensation. Potential employees therefore face both risk and uncertainty when choosing whether to accept an employment contract. Using an online labor market, Amazon Mechanical Turk, we...

Theoretical analyses of (optimal) performance measures are typically performed within the realm of the linear agency model. This model implies that, for a given compensation scheme, the agent’s optimal effort is unrelated to the amount of noise in the performance measure. In contrast,...

This paper analyzes the impact of labor market competition and skill-biased technical change on the structure of compensation. The model combines multitasking and screening, embedded into a Hotelling-like framework. Competition for the most talented workers leads to an escalating reliance on...

Wir analysieren das Gesetz zur Angemessenheit der Vorstandsvergütung. Ferner arbeiten wir einige aufgrund wirtschaftswissenschaftlicher Überlegungen zu erwartende Probleme heraus und prognostizieren mögliche ökonomische Auswirkungen des Gesetzes. Des Weiteren gehen wir im Rahmen einer...

When designing incentives for a manager, the trade-off between insurance and a "good" allocation of effort across various tasks is often identified with a trade-off between the responsiveness (sensitivity, precision, signal-noise ratio) of the performance measure and its similarity (congruity,...

This paper reports data from a laboratory experiment on two-period moral hazard problems. The findings corroborate the contract-theoretic insight that even though the periods are technologically unrelated, due to incentive considerations principals can benefit from offering long-term contracts...

In this paper, I compare two different approaches to model implicit contracting, the infinite-horizon approach typically used in the literature and afinite-horizon approach building on an adverse-selection model. I demonstrate that even the most convincing result of the infinite-horizon...

We consider a situation where an agent's effort is monitored by a supervisor who cares for the agent's well being. This is modeled by incorporating the agent's utility into the utility function of the supervisor. The first best solution can be implemented even if the supervisor's preferences are...

In this paper, a principal's decision between delegating two tasks or handling one of the two tasks herself is analyzed. We assume that the principal uses both, formal contracts and informal agreements sustained by the value of future relationships (relational contracts) as incentive device. It...