We attempt to formulate and explain two types of self-fulfilling prophecy, called the Pygmalion effect (if a supervisor thinks her subordinates will succeed, they are more likely to succeed) and the Galatea effect (if a person thinks he will succeed, he is more likely to succeed). To this...

We investigate a multi-agent moral-hazard model where agents have expectation-based reference-dependent preferences a la Koszegi and Rabin (2006, 2007). We show that even when each agent's probability of success in a project is independent, team incentives can be optimal. Because the agents are...

This paper studies the optimal contracts in a multitask model when a principal-agent relationship is long-term. If some outcomes are unverifiable, then the contracts have to satisfy the self-enforcing condition. I characterize the optimal contract in terms of the discount rate, the cost...

We attempt to formulate and explain two types of self- fulfilling prophecy, called the Pygmalion effect (if a supervisor thinks her subordinates will succeed, they are more likely to succeed) and the Galatea effect (if a person thinks he will succeed, he is more likely to succeed). To this...

We analyze a simple task-assignment model in which a principal assigns a task to one of two agents depending on the state. If the agents have standard concave utility, the principal assigns the task to an agent with the highest productivity in each state. In contrast, if the agents are loss...

We investigate moral-hazard problems with limited liability where agents have expectation-based reference-dependent preferences. We show that stochastic compensation for low performance can be optimal. Because of loss aversion, the agents have first-order risk aversion to wage uncertainty. This...