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Navigating the Complex Web of Incentives in Asset Management: A Study on Investor, Partner, and Manager Dynamics In a recent study titled "Dynamic Contracting in Asset Management Under the Investor-Partner-Manager Relationship," the researchers delve into the intricate world of incentives in asset management. The focus is on the complex interplay of actions and relationships among three key players: an investor, an investment company partner, and a fund manager. This study uniquely explores the challenges of incentive contracts in an environment where the actions of these individuals are not fully observable to each other. It introduces a hierarchical contracting framework to understand the dynamics under the hidden actions. For instance, the research reveals how the optimal action of the manager is influenced by the cost of the partner's actions and extends the analysis to scenarios involving multiple managers. This work sheds light on the often hidden intricacies of asset management, providing valuable perspectives for the different players' collaborative efforts for optimal outcomes in this industry. We study incentive contracts in asset management business under dynamic actions and relationships between an investor, a partner of an investment company, and a fund manager of the company. Both the manager and the partner exert costly effort to manage the investments. The investor cannot perfectly observe the partner's and manager's actions, and similarly, the partner cannot perfectly observe the manager's actions. Thus, we consider a hierarchical contracting framework under hidden efforts, where the investor contracts with the partner and the partner contracts with the manager. We show how the actions of the participants and the costs of their actions interact. For instance, the optimal effort of the manager falls in the effort cost of the partner. We extend the model to a case with an investor, a partner, and multiple managers. In this case, each manager's effort rises in the effectiveness of the managers' cooperation and falls in the other managers' effort cost. Funding: J. Keppo acknowledges funding support from the Singapore Ministry of Education [Grant R-252-000-A08-112] and from the National Research Foundation (Singapore) and Agency for Science, Technology and Research (Singapore) Industry Alignment Fund–Industry Collaboration Projects [Grant I2001E0059]. N. Touzi acknowledges funding from the Chaire Finance and Sustainable development, Risk Foundation, Louis Bachelier Institute. R. Zuo acknowledges funding support from Guangzhou Municipal Science and Technology Project [2023A03J0163 and 2024A04J4546] and the Guangzhou-HKUST(GZ) joint funding program [2024A03J0630]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/opre.2021.0031. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study contracting when both principal and agent have to exert noncontractible effort for production to take place. An analyst is uncertain about what actions are available and evaluates a contract by the expected payoffs it guarantees to each party in spite of the surrounding uncertainty. Both parties are risk‐neutral; there is no limited liability. Linear contracts, which leave the agent with a constant share of output in exchange for a fixed fee, are optimal. This result holds both in a preliminary version of the model, where the principal only chooses to supply or not supply an input, and in several variants of a more general version, where the principal may have multiple choices of input. The model thus generates nontrivial linear sharing rules without relying on either limited liability or risk aversion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes how the degree of task-related team diversity influences the team outcome. The focus is on a novel benefit of team diversity that does not depend on complementary skills or mutual learning. We consider a multiagent setting where the employer makes use of career competition to motivate the team. Our analysis reveals incentive effects that do not exist in the well-studied case of teams of size 2. In teams with more than two members, diversity may have a positive effect on the efforts of some members although diversity leads to unbalanced career competition. As a consequence, expected profits are higher under a moderate degree of diversity compared with a situation with completely homogeneous agents. This result shows that the employer prefers a positive degree of diversity for pure incentive reasons. This paper was accepted by Suraj Srinivasan, accounting. Funding: This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [Grants EXC 2126/1–390838866 and EXC-2047/1–390685813]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our novel game-theoretic Principal/Two-Agent model ensures that the Principal has a reliable internal signal about the Agents' invested work and effort. Analysing the dominant strategies deductively proves that suboptimal results cannot be prevented with focus on evaluation, implying that quality of work, not its evaluation, must be considered as the most important outcome of the process. The objective of the paper is to establish a new game theoretic model that can be used as a tool for policy makers and managers to motivate Agents and ensure high quality results. Additionally, the model can be used to determine the awards in a company bonus system. The newly developed model is an extended Principal-Agent model with an internal game between two Agents, whose payoff structure can be set in order to ensure truthful implementation of the internal signal to the Principal. By analysing the dominant strategies, we determined the conditions that ensure each Nash equilibrium of the game to manifest the desired outcome. The model presents a novel approach to alignment of interests, for example, in economy, social problems (e.g. policy making for educational process), management, project management, and the mentor-apprentice relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyse workplace monitoring in a principal–agent model with two types of workers who differ in their productivity. The firm decides on the effort level, the wage and the monitoring intensity for both workers. We find that the elasticities of the workers' effort-cost function and the firm's monitoring-cost function affect the firm's monitoring intensity. Our results imply that the firm might monitor the low-productive worker more closely than the high-productive worker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monitoring in Dynamic Contract Design Adverse events are harmful to a firm or to the society. In many occasions, better effort in safeguarding a system can reduce the chance of such events. Consider the scenario in which a company (i.e., "principal") hires a subcontractor (i.e., "agent") to fulfill the duty of a safeguard. The agent's effort is unobservable, and the principal may, from time to time, conduct on-site monitoring. However, monitoring is often costly to the principal. In a dynamic environment in which the principal can use both monetary payments and monitoring to induce effort, how to optimally schedule them is a challenging and important problem. In "Optimal Monitoring Schedule in Dynamic Contracts," M. Chen, P. Sun, and Y. Xiao provide theoretical guidance on designing the optimal monitoring and payment schedules that always induce full effort from an agent. They formulate the contract design problem as a stochastic optimal control model and provide a complete characterization of the optimal solution. Their analysis suggests that the optimal dynamic contracts are simple to describe, easy to compute and implement, and intuitive to explain. Consider a setting in which a principal induces effort from an agent to reduce the arrival rate of a Poisson process of adverse events. The effort is costly to the agent and unobservable to the principal unless the principal is monitoring the agent. Monitoring ensures effort but is costly to the principal. The optimal contract involves monetary payments and monitoring sessions that depend on past arrival times. We formulate the problem as a stochastic optimal control model and solve the problem analytically. The optimal schedules of payment and monitoring demonstrate different structures depending on model parameters. Overall, the optimal dynamic contracts are simple to describe, easy to compute and implement, and intuitive to explain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Balmaceda (2016) shows that, under certain conditions, specialization can dominate multitasking when tasks are complementary, because specialization allows for a more flexible implementation of effort profiles than multitasking does. We show that this result is vacuously true, and multitasking always dominates specialization with task complementarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information asymmetry is one of the main obstacles to the effective design and implementation of agri‐environmental schemes (AES). The literature has generally addressed this issue through the use of principal‐agent models (PAM). We develop a PAM to support optimal design of a new AES for improving farmland biodiversity. We use the results of choice experiments to assess both the costs incurred by the agent for the provision of biodiversity and the resulting social benefits. We also make a number of novel contributions such as the inclusion of a non‐linear non‐compliance detection curve, a sensitivity analysis to identify which parameter estimates have a critical impact on PAM results, and analysis of the efficiency of different sanction scenarios. The results suggest that: (i) the second‐best solutions differ significantly from the optimal solutions attainable with perfect information, with farmers being strongly over‐compensated for the extra costs associated with improved biodiversity; (ii) monitoring levels should be higher; (iii) the sanction system should be tougher. Sensitivity analysis shows the need for accurate estimates of the marginal cost of public funds and the costs and benefits associated with the public goods, which represent the key parameters determining PAM results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, peer‐to‐peer (P2P) networks have become an increasingly popular method for distributing digital content. In this study, we consider the development of optimal contracts for a P2P network by a profit‐seeking provider to support the operations of an online file exchange service. By utilizing the principal‐agent model of incentive theory, we propose appropriate reward and pricing schemes for profit‐seeking P2P content distribution networks. We show that when peers are homogeneous, upload compensation increases with propagation delay uncertainty, maximum uploading nodes allowed, peers' provision cost and disutility of download delay, but decreases with the network size and content availability. We also characterize a general contracting model where there are a countable number of peer classes which are heterogeneous in their provisioning costs. For the case of two peer classes where optimal delays are separable, we derive the optimal upload compensations under different scenarios and show that the impact of operational parameters is quite similar to the case of homogeneous peers, lending support to the robustness of our analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider a basic model of a risk-neutral principal incentivizing a risk-neutral agent to exert effort to raise the arrival rate of a Poisson process. The effort is costly to the agent, is unobservable to the principal, and affects the instantaneous arrival rate. Each arrival yields a constant revenue to the principal. The principal, therefore, devises a mechanism involving payments and a potential stopping time to motivate the agent to always exert effort. We formulate this problem as a stochastic optimal control model with an incentive constraint in continuous time over an infinite horizon. Although we allow payments to take general forms contingent on past arrival times, the optimal contract has a simple and intuitive structure, which depends on whether the agent is as patient as or less patient than the principal toward future income. This paper was accepted by Manel Baucells, decision analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The Social Infrastructure Fund (FAIS), created since 1998, is a conditional transfer distributed by the Mexican federal government between state and municipal governments to reduce poverty. The assignation formula used until 2013, distributed the Fund according to the relative poverty of each state in relation to the national poverty. This design did not generate the appropriate incentives to reduce poverty. Methods: Based on a principal-agent model, and explicitly acknowledging the informational asymmetry between the federal and sub national levels of government, in this paper we propose a formula to assign the Fund, which has two fundamental characteristics: the FAIS is distributed using the relative poverty of states / municipalities; and includes a component to avoid the perverse incentive of the formula used until 2013. Results: A mechanism is designed and used as the theoretical basis to construct a formula to assign the transfer. Conclusions: In order to achieve the proposed impact of the governmental programs financed with federal transfers, it is important to design and implement the mechanisms to align the incentives of the different governmental levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most of the irrigated agricultural regions in Europe are supplied by surface irrigation networks managed by local water authorities (WAs). Under such conditions, WAs are not able to fully monitor water usage and farmers have an information advantage vis-a-vis the WA. This results in the water authority suffering 'pricing failure' if it decides to apply an incentive pricing strategy (tariffs proportional to the alleged water uses). Indeed, farmers could exploit their information advantage by behaving in an opportunistic manner, withdrawing more water than declared, and ultimately paying less than they should. This situation could also undermine the efficacy and the efficiency of the WA incentive pricing strategies. This paper analyses incentive water pricing schemes under asymmetric information by the means of a Principal-Agent model. The Agency problem between the WA and farmers is addressed by introducing a monitoring strategy that would enable the WA to detect farms action. In doing so, we compare incentive strategies with flat rate water pricing and investigate under what conditions the WA might provide/not provide incentive water pricing in the absence of water metering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sensing falsification is a key security threat in cooperative spectrum sensing in cognitive radio networks. Intelligent malicious users (IMUs) adjust their malicious behaviors according to their objectives and the network’s defense schemes. Without long-term collection of information on users’ reputation, the existing schemes fail to thwart such malicious behaviors. In this paper, we construct a joint spectrum sensing and access framework to thwart the malicious behaviors of both rational and irrational IMUs. Lack of reputation information makes the malicious behavior resistance degrade performance since the honest users may be misjudged as IMUs. Based on the moral hazard principal-agent model, we design an incentive compatible mechanism to provide a moderate punishment to IMUs. Our findings show that neither spectrum sensing nor spectrum access alone can prevent malicious behaviors without any information on users’ reputation. According to the different properties of malicious behavior resistance by spectrum sensing and spectrum access, we employ joint spectrum sensing and access to optimally prevent the IMUs sensing falsification. The proposed malicious behavior resistance mechanism is shown to achieve almost the same performance as the ideal case with truthful sensing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a new method for the analysis of moral hazard principal-agent problems. The new approach avoids the stringent assumptions on the distribution of outcomes made by the classical first-order approach and instead only requires the agent's expected utility to be a rational function of the action. This assumption allows for a reformulation of the agent's utility maximization problem as an equivalent system of equations and inequalities. This reformulation in turn transforms the principal's utility maximization problem into a nonlinear program. Under the additional assumptions that the principal's expected utility is a polynomial and the agent's expected utility is rational in the wage, the final nonlinear program can be solved to global optimality. The paper also shows how to first approximate expected utility functions that are not rational by polynomials, so that the polynomial optimization approach can be applied to compute an approximate solution to nonpolynomial problems. Finally, the paper demonstrates that the polynomial optimization approach extends to principal-agent models with multidimensional action sets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a dynamic contracting environment, increasing standards over time in light of past performance is known as the ratchet effect. Despite the recent theoretical attention given to the ratchet effect, models that include these effects have not been empirically tested against contract data. In this study, we use farm-level data on modern Great Plains agricultural cash rent and crop share contracts to test for the presence of ratchet effects in the context of a principal-agent model with moral hazard. We find limited evidence for the ratchet effect within share contracts, and no evidence that it is important for the choice of contract between cash rent and crop share.

Abstract: We analyze how the agent's initial wealth affects the principal's expected profits in the standard principal–agent model with moral hazard. We show that if the principal prefers a poorer agent for all specifications of action sets, probability distributions, and disutility of effort, then the agent's utility of income must exhibit a coefficient of absolute prudence less than three times the coefficient of absolute risk aversion for all levels of income, thus strengthening the sufficiency result of Thiele and Wambach (1999). Also, we prove that there is no condition on the agent's utility of income alone that will make the principal prefer richer agents. Moreover, we show that, for an interesting class of problems, the principal prefers a relatively poorer agent if agent's wealth is sufficiently large. Finally, we discuss how alternative ways of modeling the agent's outside option affects the principal's preferences for agent's wealth. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: We study the effect of leadership on incentive contracts in a moral-hazard framework. In our model, agents are allowed to choose the timing of their actions. The agents may choose their effort levels simultaneously or sequentially. We show that relative performance evaluation leads to a subgame in which agents make simultaneous effort choices, whereas joint performance evaluation yields a subgame in which agents make sequential effort choices. Since agents exert more effort in the sequential game, the principal uses joint performance evaluation to induce the leader–follower relationship among agents. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In the paper we analyze a contractual relation between two economic agents concerning an action or a decision to be taken. This approach corresponds to the Principal-Agent model, analyzed both in the case of symmetric information and in the case of asymmetric information (the moral hazard model). We suppose that the two partners are risk neutral and we determine the features of the optimal contract to be signed by these economic agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Averting or limiting the outbreak of infectious disease in domestic livestock herds is an economic and potential human health issue that involves the government and individual livestock producers. Producers have private information about preventive biosecurity measures they adopt on their farms prior to outbreak ( ex ante moral hazard), and following outbreak they possess private information about whether or not their herd is infected ( ex post adverse selection). We investigate how indemnity payments can be designed to provide incentives to producers to invest in biosecurity and report infection to the government in the presence of asymmetric information. We compare the relative magnitude of the first- and second-best levels of biosecurity investment and indemnity payments to demonstrate the tradeoff between risk sharing and efficiency, and we discuss the implications for status quo U.S. policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents simple new multisignal generalizations of the two classic methods used to justify the first-order approach to moral hazard principal-agent problems, and compares these two approaches with each other. The paper first discusses limitations of previous generalizations. Then a state-space formulation is used to obtain a new multisignal generalization of the Jewitt (1988) conditions. Next, using the Mirrlees formulation, new multisignal generalizations of the convexity of the distribution function condition (CDFC) approach of Rogerson (1985) and Sinclair-Desgagné (1994) are obtained. Vector calculus methods are used to derive easy-to-check local conditions for our generalization of the CDFC. Finally, we argue that the Jewitt conditions may generalize more flexibly than the CDFC to the multisignal case. This is because, with many signals, the principal can become very well informed about the agent's action and, even in the one-signal case, the CDFC must fail when the signal becomes very accurate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows that the marginal value of a “small amount of non-output information” is generally non-positive in the context of the standard principal-agent model involving moral hazard, which suggests a non-concavity in the value of information. However, when both the principal and the agent are risk neutral, even a small amount of non-output information may exhibit a positive incremental value in presence of a liability constraint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce bargaining power in a moral hazard framework where parties are risk-neutral and the agent is financially constrained. We show that the same contract emerges if the concept of bargaining power is analyzed in either of the following three frameworks: in a standard principal–agent (P–A) framework by varying the agent's outside opportunity, in an alternating offer game, and in a generalized Nash-bargaining game. However, for sufficiently low levels of the agent's bargaining power, increasing it marginally does affect the equilibrium in the Nash-bargaining game, but not in the P–A model and in the alternating offer game. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One interesting explanation for asset securitization is the managerial agency theory—where securitization of cash flows that are relatively insensitive to managerial effort reduces the noise for cash flows that are sensitive to managerial effort (Iacobucci and Winter, 2005). This paper extends this concept in several ways. First, we differentiate the effects of noise and effort sensitivity on managerial effort and compensation, underscoring the importance of a less noisy environment. We also carefully delineate the conditions under which asset securitization would improve the welfare of managers and shareholders of the originating company. Second, we relax the assumptions regarding the expected income-producing function and the income variance, and further take into consideration the change of the marginal production of income with respect to effort before and after securitization. Third, under a multitask principal-agent model framework, we explore how the relationship between managerial activities on different assets affects the incentive compensation for the manager of the originating company and the joint surplus for shareholder and manager. This is particularly relevant when entire buildings are securitized as opposed to pools of income-generating assets. Finally, we examine the role of the third-party servicer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a dynamic contracting environment, increasing standards over time in light of past performance is known as the ratchet effect. Despite the recent theoretical attention given to the ratchet effect, models that include these effects have not been empirically tested against contract data. In this study, we use farm-level data on modern Great Plains agricultural cash rent and cropshare contracts to test for the presence of ratchet effects in the context of a principal-agent model with moral hazard. We find limited evidence for the ratchet effect within share contracts, and no evidence that it is important for the choice of contract between cash rent and cropshare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]