Compensation and price delegation for heterogeneous sales force

A heterogeneous sales force may not be as desirable as a homogeneous sales force for two reasons: premiums are required for all except from one agent type, and only the highest type would work as hard as though they were from a homogeneous sales force. This study revisits the heterogeneous sales force compensation and price delegation problem with type-dependent reservation. We find that an equilibrium separating or pooling compensation contract always exists. Different types of agents may receive premiums, and there are scenarios when no premiums are paid. Retaining centralized pricing provides a tool for regulating agent behavior. More than one or even all agent types may work as hard as though they were members of a homogeneous sales force. These findings differ from existing results and their driving force is the dynamics between the differences in reservations and agents’ effort costs arising from concealing their true types

Employees as Regulators: The New Private Ordering in High Technology Companies

There is mounting public concern over the influence that high technology companies have in our society. In the past, these companies were lauded for their innovations, but now as one scandal after another has plagued them, from being a conduit in influencing elections (think Cambridge Analytica) to the development of weaponized artificial intelligence, to their own moment of reckoning with the #MeToo movement, these same companies are under scrutiny. Leaders in high technology companies created their own sets of norms through private ordering. Their work was largely unfettered by regulators, with the exception of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s oversight of public companies. Now, however, white-collar employees at high technology companies are speaking out in protest about their respective employers’ actions and changing private ordering as we know it. In essence, employees are holding companies accountable for the choices they make, whether it is what area to work (or not work) in or eliminating a practice that has systemic implications, such as mandatory arbitration provisions for sexual misconduct cases. This Article builds upon my prior work on the role of corporations and social movements, analyzing how employees in high technology companies have redefined the contours of private ordering and, in the process, have also reimagined what collective action looks like. Because these workers are in high demand and short supply, they are able to affect private ordering in a way that we have not seen before. As a result, they have the potential to be an important check on the high technology sector

Incentive Design for Operations-Marketing Multitasking

A firm hires an agent (e.g., store manager) to undertake both operational and marketing tasks. Marketing tasks boost demand, but for demand to translate into sales, operational effort is required to maintain adequate inventory. The firm designs a compensation plan to induce the agent to put effort into both marketing and operations while facing “demand censoring” (i.e., demand in excess of available inventory is unobservable). We formulate this incentive-design problem in a principal-agent framework with a multitasking agent subject to a censored signal. We develop a bang-bang optimal control approach, with a general optimality structure applicable to a broad class of incentive-design problems. Using this approach, we characterize the optimal compensation plan, with a bonus region resembling a “mast” and “sail,” such that a bonus is paid when either all inventory above a threshold is sold or the sales quantity meets an inventory-dependent target. The optimal “mast and sail” compensation plan implies non-monotonicity, where the agent can be less likely to receive a bonus for achieving a better outcome. This gives rise to an ex post moral hazard issue where the agent may “hide” inventory to earn a bonus. We show this ex post moral hazard issue is a result of demand censoring. If available information includes a waitlist (or other noisy signals) to gauge unsatisfied demand, no ex post moral hazard issues remain

Designing multi-target salesforce incentive contract

Multi-target incentive contracts are widely observed in practice to stimulate salesforce effort. However, little is known about their effectiveness and the issues involved in designing them. In this thesis, we investigate the incentive contracting problem between a manufacturer and an agent when the realized sales of a product are affected by both the agent\u27s selling effort and the type of the agent. The agent\u27s type is uncertain to the manufacturer, whereas the agent can observe the actual type when exerting her selling effort. Again, this is unobservable by the manufacturer. For contract design problem, we develop a principal-agent model with both moral hazard and adverse selection. We examine the manufacturer\u27s optimal contract parameter decisions employing a single multi-target contract for the agent who can be of different types. Because menu contracts are commonly studied in literature for the adverse selection problem, we also study a menu of single-target contracts; and examine the manufacturer\u27s optimal contract parameter decisions. We then compare the performance between the two types of contract. We arrive at a number of managerial insights regarding the design and the performance of multi-target contract and menu contract

The Electronic Silk Road: How the Web Binds the World in Commerce

On the ancient Silk Road, treasure-laden caravans made their arduous way through deserts and mountain passes, establishing trade between Asia and the civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean. Today’s electronic Silk Roads ferry information across continents, enabling individuals and corporations anywhere to provide or receive services without obtaining a visa. But the legal infrastructure for such trade is yet rudimentary and uncertain. If an event in cyberspace occurs at once everywhere and nowhere, what law applies? How can consumers be protected when engaging with companies across the world? In this accessible book, cyber-law expert Anupam Chander provides the first thorough discussion of the law that relates to global Internet commerce. Addressing up-to-the-minute examples, such as Google’s struggles with China, the Pirate Bay’s skirmishes with Hollywood, and the outsourcing of services to India, the author insightfully analyzes the difficulties of regulating Internet trade. Chander then lays out a framework for future policies, showing how countries can dismantle barriers while still protecting consumer interests

Regulating Habit-Forming Technology

Tech developers, like slot machine designers, strive to maximize the user’s “time on device.” They do so by designing habit-forming products— products that draw consciously on the same behavioral design strategies that the casino industry pioneered. The predictable result is that most tech users spend more time on device than they would like, about five hours of phone time a day, while a substantial minority develop life-changing behavioral problems similar to problem gambling. Other countries have begun to regulate habit-forming tech, and American jurisdictions may soon follow suit. Several state legislatures today are considering bills to regulate “loot boxes,” a highly addictive slot-machine- like mechanic that is common in online video games. The Federal Trade Commission has also announced an investigation into the practice. As public concern mounts, it is surprisingly easy to envision consumer regulation extending beyond video games to other types of apps. Just as tobacco regulations might prohibit brightly colored packaging and fruity flavors, a social media regulation might limit the use of red notification badges or “streaks” that reward users for daily use. It is unclear how much of this regulation could survive First Amendment scrutiny; software, unlike other consumer products, is widely understood as a form of protected “expression.” But it is also unclear whether well-drawn laws to combat compulsive technology use would seriously threaten First Amendment values. At a very low cost to the expressive interests of tech companies, these laws may well enhance the quality and efficacy of online speech by mitigating distraction and promoting deliberation

Race & Mobility in the Digital Periphery: New Urban Frontiers of Migration Control

Global movement and information technologies are changing practices of bordering, globally. Such matters are now also substantially urban. As cities of refuge rely increasingly on tech companies to develop digital urban infrastructures for accessing information, services, and socioeconomic life at large, they are also inviting the border closer to cities and migrant bodies. This marks a convergence of Silicon Valley logics, austere and xenophobic migration management practices, and racial capitalism. In New York City, infrastructural technologies such as sophisticated public Wi-Fi, smart ID cards, and digitalised city services, in an environment prone to deportation raids, has led to deep information “panics”. In Berlin, a combination of civil society and private sector technology initiatives have produced a deluge of largely unused or distrusted information services, job-matching, house-sharing, social credit, and identity management tools in the name of refugees. In lieu of mitigating conditions of displacement, these practices compound analogue borders by engaging in a practice of digitally fusing borders to racialised characteristics, resulting in symbolic, material, and epistemic forms of technological marginalization. Through following and documenting how migrant communities navigate and experience these digital urban interventions, and the logics of those who develop them, this dissertation 1) highlights how migrant bodies and urban spaces become contested spaces in the battle for racial capital – a frontier in which technology actors are chiefly concerned with reconstituting conceptions of race for power and profit, and; 2). unveils how digital urban infrastructures interact with subtle practices of racialised bordering. Drawing on an analytical lens rooted predominantly in the Black radical tradition, critical development and migration studies, and science and technology studies, it challenges the paradigms of techno-solutionism and techno-chauvinism, as well as critical digital studies that has tended to treat race and racialism as a symptom of, rather than as integral to, the technology industry. By extension, the field of migration has also tended to impart greater weight to the positive affordances of technology in contexts of displacement, in absence of the critical voice of would-be recipients and “users”. By attending to the frontiers of racial capitalism and increasing technology deployments, I advance the idea of the ‘digital periphery’ to make sense of how urban migrant environments and subjectivities are commodified and ‘datafied’. As a concept, the digital periphery allows for the rapid advance of technology upon displaced populations to be disaggregated. It reveals an inseparable and mutually constitutive entanglement of race, borders, and migration, advancing racial capitalism beyond its conventional physical and spatial limitations.This dissertation was completed with the financial support of the Jo Cox PhD Studentship at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge, and the Cambridge Commonwealth, European and International Trust