Equal Sharing Rules in Partnerships

Partnerships are the prevalent organizational form in many industries. Most partnerships share profits equally among the partners. Following Kandel and Lazear (1992) it is often argued that ``peer pressure'' mitigates the arising free-rider problem. This line of reasoning takes the equal sharing rule as exogenously given. The purpose of our paper is to show that with inequity averse partners - a behavioral assumption akin to peer pressure - the equal sharing rule arises endogenously as an optimal solution to the incentive problem in a partnership

Contracts and Inequity Aversion

Using the concept of Inequity Aversion we derive in a Moral Hazard setting several results which differ from conventional contract theory. Our three key insights are: First, inequity aversion plays a crucial role in the design of optimal contracts. Second, there is a strong tendency towards linear sharing rules, giving a simple and plausible rationale for the prevalence of these schemes in the real world. Third, the Sufficient Statistics result no longer holds as optimal contracts may be ”too” complete. Along with these key insights we derive a couple of further results.contract theory, linear contracts, incentives, sufficient statistics result, inequity aversion, fairness

Contracts and Inequity Aversion

Inequity aversion is a special form of other regarding preferences and captures many features of reciprocal behavior, an apparently robust pattern in human nature. Using this concept we analyze the Moral Hazard problem and derive several results which differ from conventional contract theory. Our three key insights are: First, inequity aversion plays a crucial role in the design of optimal contracts. Second, there is a strong tendency towards linear sharing rules, giving a simple and plausible rationale for the prevalence of these schemes in the real world. Third, the Sufficient Statistics result no longer holds as optimal contracts may be ''too'' complete. Along with these key insights we derive a couple of further results.contract theory, linear contracts, incentives, sufficient statistics result, inequity aversion

Equal Sharing Rules in Partnerships

Partnerships are the prevalent organizational form in many industries. Most partnerships share profits equally among the partners. Following Kandel and Lazear (1992) it is often argued that ``peer pressure'' mitigates the arising free-rider problem. This line of reasoning takes the equal sharing rule as exogenously given. The purpose of our paper is to show that with inequity averse partners - a behavioral assumption akin to peer pressure - the equal sharing rule arises endogenously as an optimal solution to the incentive problem in a partnership.equal sharing rule; partnerships; incentives; peer pressure; inequity aversion

Equal Sharing Rules in Partnerships

Partnerships are the prevalent organizational form in many industries. Most partnerships share profits equally among the partners. Following Kandel and Lazear (1992) it is often argued that "peer pressure" mitigates the arising free-rider problem. This line of reasoning takes the equal sharing rule as exogenously given. The purpose of our paper is to show that with inequity averse partners - a behavioral assumption akin to peer pressure - the equal sharing rule arises endogenously as an optimal solution to the incentive problem in a partnership.equal sharing rule; partnerships; incentives; peer pressure; inequity aversion

Relational Contracts and Inequity Aversion

We study the effects of envy on the feasibility of relational contracts in a standard moral hazard setup with two agents. Performance is evaluated via an observable, but non-contractible signal which reflects the agent´s individual contribution to firm value. Both agents exhibit disadvantageous inequity aversion. In contrast to the literature, we find that inequity aversion may be beneficial: In the presence of envy, for a certain range of interest rates relational contracts may be more profitable. Furthermore, for some interest rates reputational equilibria exist only with inequity averse agents.Principal-Agent, Relational Contract, Inequity Aversion, Envy

Fairness, Adverse Selection, and Employment Contracts

This paper considers a firm whose potential employees have private information on both their productivity and the extent of their fairness concerns. Fairness is modelled as inequity aversion, where fair-minded workers suffer if their colleagues get more income net of production costs. Screening workers with equal productivity but different fairness concerns is shown to be impossible if both types are to be employed, thereby rendering the optimal employment contracts discontinuous in the fraction of fair-minded workers. As a result, fairness might infuence the employment contracts of all workers although only some are fair-minded, and identical firms facing very similar pools of workers might employ very different remuneration schemes

Fairness and Contract Design

We show experimentally that fairness concerns may have a decisive impact on the actual and optimal choice of contracts in a moral hazard context. Bonus contracts that offer a voluntary and unenforceable bonus for satisfactory performance provide powerful incentives and are superior to explicit incentive contracts when there are some fair-minded players. But trust contracts that pay a generous wage upfront are less efficient than incentive contracts. The principals understand this and predominantly choose the bonus contracts. Our results are consistent with recently developed theories of fairness, which offer important new insights into the interaction of contract choices, fairness and incentives

The Intensity of Incentives in Firms and Markets: Moral Hazard with Envious Agents

While most market transactions are subject to strong incentives, transactions within firms are often not incentivized. We offer an explanation for this observation based on envy among agents in an otherwise standard moral hazard model with multiple agents. Envious agents suffer if other agents receive a higher wage due to random shocks to their performance measures. The necessary compensation for expected envy renders incentive provision more expensive, which generates a tendency towards flat-wage contracts. Moreover, empirical evidence suggests that social comparisons like envy are more pronounced among employees within firms than among individuals who interact only in the market. Flat-wage contracts are thus more likely to be optimal in firms than in markets

Inequity aversion and team incentives

We study optimal contracts when employees are averse to inequity as modelled by Fehr and Schmidt (1999). A ''selfish'' employer can profitably exploit preferences for equity among his employees by offering contracts which create maximum inequity off-equilibrium and thus, leave employees feeling envy or guilt when they do not produce the optimal output level. We show how the optimal contract is designed such that the subgame played by the employees is dominance solvable, and thus, a unique optimal level of production is implemented. We also discuss conditions for inequity aversion to affect the optimal output choice. Similar results are obtained for other types of distributional preferences such status-seeking or efficiency concerns.035 Principal, agent, inequity aversion, team incentives, behavioral contract theory