Supervisory Efficiency and Collusion in a Multiple-Agent Hierarchy

We analyze a principal-supervisor-two-agent hierarchy with inefficient supervision. The su-pervisor may collects a wrong signal on each agent’s unobservable effort level. When reportingto the principal, the supervisor can collude with one or both agents to manipulate the signalin exchange for a bribe. In contract design, we identify a new trade-off between the loss fromsupervisor-agent collusion and the risk from inefficient supervision: Although allowing collu-sion makes shirking more attractive to the agents, it brings in a benefit because it can “correct”an incorrect negative signal when the agent has exerted effort. Such collusive supervision savesrisk premiums that the principal has to pay for incentive provision. We characterize the princi-pal’s optimal contract choice among no-supervision, collusion-proof, and collusive-supervisioncontracts. We show that the collusive-supervision contract dominates when the supervisory ef-ficiency is at an intermediate level

Willingness to Pay for Brand Reputation: Lessons from the Volkswagen Diesel Emissions Scandal

In this study, we use the announcement of the Volkswagen emissions scandalon September 18, 2015, as an exogenous shock to measure consumers’ willing-ness to pay (WTP) for brand reputation. Only Volkswagen diesel cars producedin2009-2015were announced as emissions violators. Using eBay car auction data,we estimate the impacts of the scandal on the prices of Volkswagen emissionsnon-violatingcars. Our difference-in-differences estimates show that final bid prices decreased by 14% and 9% in diesel and gasoline car markets, respectively, whichpurely reflected a decline in consumers’ WTP for Volkswagen’s brand reputation.Additionally, the difference in price-drops between the violating and non-violating diesel cars is statistically insignificant. This may be due to the fact that consumers rationally adjust their WTP by expecting compensation which will almost surely be provided by Volkswagen for violating models

PLC and configuration software based supervisory and control system for oil tanks area

Author name used in this publication: K. W. E. ChengVersion of RecordPublishe

Correlations among superconductivity, structural instability, and band filling in Nb1-xB2 at the critical point x=0.2

We performed an extensive investigation on the correlations among superconductivity, structural instability and band filling in Nb1-xB2 materials. Structural measurements reveal that a notable phase transformation occurs at x=0.2, corresponding to the Fermi level (EF) in the pseudogap with the minimum total density of states (DOS) as demonstrated by the first-principles calculations. Superconductivity in Nb1-xB2 generally becomes visible in the Nb-deficient materials with x=0.2. Electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) measurements on B K-edge directly demonstrated the presence of a chemical shift arising from the structural transformation. Our systematical experimental results in combination with theoretical analysis suggest that the emergence of hole states in the sigma-bands plays an important role for understanding the superconductivity and structural transition in Nb1-xB2.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figure