On the Hidden Costs of Incentive Schemes

By enriching a principal-agent model it is shown that the introduction of monetary incentives may reduce an agent's motivation. In a first step, we allow for the possibility that some agents stick to unverifiable agreements. The larger the fraction of reliable agents, the lower powered will then be the optimal incentive scheme and fixed wages become optimal when performance measurement is costly. If social norms matter such that some agents' reliability is influenced by their beliefs on the convictions of others, high powered incentives signal that not sticking to agreements is a widespread behavior and may lead to lower effort levels.Incentives, Intrinsic Motivation, Motivation Crowding-Out, Honesty

On the Use of Nonfinancial Performance Measures in Management Compensation

It is often claimed that (i) managers work too hard on operational issues and do not spend enough effort on strategic activities and (ii) something can be done about this by introducing nonfinancial performance measures as for instance with a balanced scorecard. We give an explanation for both claims in a formal model. The distortion towards operational effort arises, because with financial performance measures strategic effort can only be rewarded in the future. But renegotiation-proof long term compensation plans entail too weak variable components in the future. This problem can be reduced by introducing performance measures that help to disentangle strategic and operational effects.Performance Measurement, Nonfinancial Measures, Balanced Scorecard, Incentives, Renegotiation

Performance Pay and Risk Aversion

A main prediction of agency theory is the well known risk-incentive trade-off. Incentive contracts should be found in environments with little uncertainty and for agents with low degrees of risk aversion. There is an ongoing debate in the literature about the first trade-off. Due to lack of data, there has so far been hardly any empirical evidence about the second. Making use of a unique representative data set, we find clear evidence that risk aversion has a highly significant and substantial negative impact on the probability that an employee's pay is performance contingent

Should You Allow Your Agent to Become Your Competitor? On Non-Compete Agreements in Employment Contracts

We discuss a principal-agent model in which the principal has the opportunity to include a non-compete agreement in the employment contract. We show that not imposing such an agreement can be beneficial for the principal as the possibility to leave the firm generates implicit incentives for the agent. The principal prefers to impose such a clause if and only if the value created is sufficiently small relative to the agent's outside option. If the principal can use an option con- tract for retaining the agent, she will never prefer a strict non-compete agreement

Wage Premia for Newly Hired Employees: Theory and Evidence

We investigate wage differences between newly hired and incumbent employees. We show in a formal model that when employees care for wages as well as match-specific utility, incumbents earn less than new recruits if and only if firm-specific human capital is not too important. The existence and structure of these wage premia is then investigated empirically using detailed personnel data from a large number of banks. We find that, on average, new hires earn more than comparable incumbent colleagues on the same job. But the size of the wage premia varies between jobs and indeed strongly depends on a measure of human capital specificity.wages, job mobility, wage premia, human capital, new hires

Strategic Delegation and Mergers in Oligopolistic Contests

In this paper, we combine the strategic delegation approach of Fershtman-Judd-Sklivas with contets. The results show that besides a symmetric equilibrium there also exist asymmetric equilibria in which one owner induces pure sales maximization to his manager so that all the other firms drop out of the market. If merging is allowed on an initial stage, the resulting merged subgame perfect equilibria show that there is strictly more merging under contest than under Cournot competition. We also compare our findings with the previous results on contest models with delegation and find that the outcomes for the Fershtman-Judd-Sklivas incentive scheme clearly differ. Especially, in our model we have a prisoner`s-dilemma like situation where delegation is individually rational for each owner, but all owners are worse off compared to non-delegation.Strategic Delegation, Mergers, Oligopoly, Contests

Risk Taking in Asymmetric Tournaments

In an asymmetric tournament model with endogenous risk choice by the agents it is shown that equilibrium efforts decrease (increase) with risk if abilities are sufficiently similar (different). Risk also affects winning probabilities. The interaction of both effects is analyzed.effort effect, likelihood effect, risk taking, tournament

Risk-Taking Tournaments: Theory and Experimental Evidence

We study risk-taking behavior in a simple two person tournament in a theoretical model as well as a laboratory experiment. First, a model is analyzed in which two agents simultaneously decide between a risky and a safe strategy and we allow for all possible degrees of correlation between the outcomes of the risky strategies. We show that risk-taking behavior crucially depends on this correlation as well as on the size of a potential lead of one of the contestants. We find that the experimental subjects acted mostly quite well in line with the derived theoretical predictions.tournaments, competition, risk-taking, experiment

Should You Allow Your Agent to Become Your Competitor? On Non-Compete Agreements in Employment Contracts

We discuss a principal-agent model in which the principal has the opportunity to include a non-compete agreement in the employment contract. We show that not imposing such an agreement can be beneficial for the principal as the possibility to leave the firm generates implicit incentives for the agent. The principal prefers to impose such a clause if and only if the value created is sufficiently small relative to the agent's outside option. If the principal can use an option con- tract for retaining the agent, she will never prefer a strict non-compete agreement.fine; incentives; incomplete contracts; non-compete agreements; option contract

"The Further We Stretch the Higher the Sky" - On the Impact of Wage Increases on Job Satisfaction

The impact of wage increases on job satisfaction is explored. First, it is empirically confirmed that current job satisfaction rises with the absolute wage level as well as with wage increases. Second, a basic job satisfaction function is constructed based on the empirical results, and theoretical implications are analyzed. Myopic maximization of such a function directly implies increasing and concave shaped wage profiles. It is shown that employees get unhappier over time staying on a certain job although wages increase, which again is empirically confirmed.Job satisfaction, Wage increases, Habit formation, Wage profiles, Relative utility