Monitoring a common agent: Implications for financial contracting

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Khalil, Fahad; Martimort, David; Parigi, Bruno
• 署名单位: University of Washington; University of Washington Seattle; Universite de Toulouse; University of Padua
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2005.08.010
• 发表日期: 2007
• 页码: 35-67
• 关键词: Monitoring; common agency; costly state verification

摘要

Multiple principals want to obtain income from a privately informed agent and design their contracts noncooperatively. The degree of coordination between principals shapes the contracts and affects the amount of monitoring. Equity-like contracts and excessive monitoring emerge when principals coordinate or verify each other's monitoring efforts. When this is not possible, free riding weakens monitoring incentives, so that flat payments, debt-like contracts, and very low levels of monitoring appear. Free riding may be so strong to induce even less monitoring than if the principals cooperated with each other; that is, non-cooperative monitoring does not necessarily lead to excessive monitoring. (c) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.