Rank Uncertainty in Organizations

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Halac, Marina; Lipnowski, Elliot; Rappoport, Daniel
• 署名单位: Yale University; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK; Columbia University; University of Chicago
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0002-8282
• DOI: 10.1257/aer.20200555
• 发表日期: 2021
• 页码: 757-786
• 关键词: Incentives; equilibrium; Robustness; games

摘要

A principal incentivizes a team of agents to work by privately offering them bonuses contingent on team success. We study the principal's optimal incentive scheme that implements work as a unique equilibrium. This scheme leverages rank uncertainty to address strategic uncertainty. Each agent is informed only of a ranking distribution and his own bonus, the latter making work dominant provided that higher-rank agents work. If agents are symmetric, their bonuses are identical. Thus, discrimination is strictly suboptimal, in sharp contrast with the case of public contracts (Winter 2004). We characterize how agents' ranking and compensation vary with asymmetric effort costs.