Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecl/stabus/2049.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Endogenous Selection and Moral Hazard in Compensation Contracts

Author

Listed:
  • Armstrong, Christopher D.

    (University of Pennsylvania)

  • Larcker, David F.

    (Stanford University)

  • Su, Che-Lin

    (University of Chicago)

Abstract
The two major paradigms in the theoretical agency literature are moral hazard (i.e., hidden action) and adverse selection (i.e., hidden information). Prior research typically solves these problems in isolation, as opposed to simultaneously incorporating both adverse selection and moral hazard features. We formulate two complementary generalized principal-agent models that incorporate features observed in real world contracting environments (e.g., agents with power utility and limited liability, lognormal stock price distributions, and stock options) as mathematical programs with equilibrium constraints (MPEC). We use state- of-the-art numerical algorithms to solve the resulting models. We find that many of the standard results no longer obtain when wealth effects are present. We also develop a new measure of incentives calculated as the change in the agent's certainty equivalent under the optimal contract for a change in action evaluated at the optimal action. This measure facilitates interpretation of the resulting contracts and allows us to compare contracts across different contracting environments.

Suggested Citation

  • Armstrong, Christopher D. & Larcker, David F. & Su, Che-Lin, 2010. "Endogenous Selection and Moral Hazard in Compensation Contracts," Research Papers 2049, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecl:stabus:2049
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://gsbapps.stanford.edu/researchpapers/library/RP2049&73.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lisa Meulbroek, 2001. "The Efficiency of Equity-Linked Compensation: Understanding the Full Cost of Awarding Executive Stock Options," Financial Management, Financial Management Association, vol. 30(2), Summer.
    2. Rogerson, William P, 1985. "The First-Order Approach to Principal-Agent Problems," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(6), pages 1357-1367, November.
    3. Ohad Kadan, 2008. "Stocks or Options? Moral Hazard, Firm Viability, and the Design of Compensation Contracts," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 21(1), pages 451-482, January.
    4. Lucas, Deborah J., 1994. "Asset pricing with undiversifiable income risk and short sales constraints: Deepening the equity premium puzzle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 325-341, December.
    5. Hall, Brian J. & Murphy, Kevin J., 2002. "Stock options for undiversified executives," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 3-42, February.
    6. Araujo, Aloisio & Moreira, Humberto, 2001. "A general Lagrangian approach for non-concave moral hazard problems," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 17-39, February.
    7. Green, Jerry & Laffont, Jean-Jacques, 1977. "Characterization of Satisfactory Mechanisms for the Revelation of Preferences for Public Goods," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 45(2), pages 427-438, March.
    8. Ingolf Dittmann & Ernst Maug, 2007. "Lower Salaries and No Options? On the Optimal Structure of Executive Pay," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 62(1), pages 303-343, February.
    9. Myerson, Roger B, 1979. "Incentive Compatibility and the Bargaining Problem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(1), pages 61-73, January.
    10. Litzenberger, Robert H & Ronn, Ehud I, 1986. "A Utility-based Model of Common Stock Price Movements," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 41(1), pages 67-92, March.
    11. Edward P. Lazear, 2000. "Performance Pay and Productivity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(5), pages 1346-1361, December.
    12. Myerson, Roger B., 1982. "Optimal coordination mechanisms in generalized principal-agent problems," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 67-81, June.
    13. Lambert, Richard A., 2001. "Contracting theory and accounting," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1-3), pages 3-87, December.
    14. Core, John & Guay, Wayne, 1999. "The use of equity grants to manage optimal equity incentive levels," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 151-184, December.
    15. Holmstrom, Bengt & Milgrom, Paul, 1987. "Aggregation and Linearity in the Provision of Intertemporal Incentives," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(2), pages 303-328, March.
    16. Bruno Jullien & Bernard Salanié & François Salanié, 2000. "Screening Risk-Averse Agents Under Moral Hazard," Working Papers 2000-41, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.
    17. Green, Jerry & Laffont, Jean-Jacques, 1977. "On the revelation of preferences for public goods," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 79-93, August.
    18. Paul Milgrom., 1987. "Adverse Selection without Hidden Information," Economics Working Papers 8742, University of California at Berkeley.
    19. Grossman, Sanford J & Hart, Oliver D, 1983. "An Analysis of the Principal-Agent Problem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 51(1), pages 7-45, January.
    20. Bengt Holmstrom, 1979. "Moral Hazard and Observability," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 10(1), pages 74-91, Spring.
    21. Jaeyoung Sung, 2005. "Optimal Contracts Under Adverse Selection and Moral Hazard: A Continuous-Time Approach," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 18(3), pages 1021-1073.
    22. Hermalin, Benjamin E & Katz, Michael L, 1991. "Moral Hazard and Verifiability: The Effects of Renegotiation in Agency," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(6), pages 1735-1753, November.
    23. Jewitt, Ian, 1988. "Justifying the First-Order Approach to Principal-Agent Problems," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(5), pages 1177-1190, September.
    24. Bengt Holmstrom, 1979. "Moral Hazard and Observability," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 10(1), pages 74-91, Spring.
    25. O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), 1999. "Handbook of Labor Economics," Handbook of Labor Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 3, number 3.
    26. Ananth V. Iyer & Leroy B. Schwarz & Stefanos A. Zenios, 2005. "A Principal-Agent Model for Product Specification and Production," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 51(1), pages 106-119, January.
    27. Kathleen M. Hagerty & Daniel R. Siegel, 1988. "On the Observational Equivalence of Managerial Contracts Under Conditions of Moral Hazard and Self-Selection," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 103(2), pages 425-428.
    28. Christopher Armstrong & David Larcker & Che-Lin Su, 2007. "Stock Options and Chief Executive Compensation," Discussion Papers 1447, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    29. Fershtman, Chaim & Judd, Kenneth L, 1987. "Equilibrium Incentives in Oligopoly," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(5), pages 927-940, December.
    30. J. A. Mirrlees, 1999. "The Theory of Moral Hazard and Unobservable Behaviour: Part I," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 66(1), pages 3-21.
    31. Kocherlakota, Narayana R., 1990. "On tests of representative consumer asset pricing models," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 285-304, October.
    32. Hemenway, David, 1992. "Propitious Selection in Insurance," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 5(3), pages 247-251, July.
    33. Lewis, Tracy R. & Sappington, David E. M., 1989. "Countervailing incentives in agency problems," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 294-313, December.
    34. Partha Dasgupta & Peter Hammond & Eric Maskin, 1979. "The Implementation of Social Choice Rules: Some General Results on Incentive Compatibility," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 46(2), pages 185-216.
    35. Friend, Irwin & Blume, Marshall E, 1975. "The Demand for Risky Assets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 65(5), pages 900-922, December.
    36. Stanley Baiman & Paul E. Fischer & Madhav V. Rajan, 2001. "Performance Measurement and Design in Supply Chains," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 47(1), pages 173-188, January.
    37. Harris, Milton & Raviv, Artur, 1979. "Optimal incentive contracts with imperfect information," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 231-259, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Moussawi-Haidar, Lama & Çömez-Dolgan, Nagihan, 2017. "Percentage rent contracts between co-stores," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 258(3), pages 912-925.
    2. Shivam Gupta & Sachin Modgil & Samadrita Bhattacharyya & Indranil Bose, 2022. "Artificial intelligence for decision support systems in the field of operations research: review and future scope of research," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 308(1), pages 215-274, January.
    3. Tian, Yisong S., 2013. "Ironing out the kinks in executive compensation: Linking incentive pay to average stock prices," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 415-432.
    4. Kenneth Judd & Garrett van Ryzin, 2010. "Preface to the Special Issue on Computational Economics," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 58(4-part-2), pages 1035-1036, August.
    5. Christopher S. Armstrong, 2013. "The Ombudsman: A Closer Look at the Efficiency of Top Executive Pay and Incentives," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 43(6), pages 590-592, December.
    6. Zhang, Yanfen & Xu, Qi & Zhang, Guoqing, 2023. "Optimal contracts with moral hazard and adverse selection in a live streaming commerce market," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    7. Iny Hwang & Youngsoo Kim & Michael K. Lim, 2023. "Optimal Ratcheting in Executive Compensation," Decision Analysis, INFORMS, vol. 20(2), pages 166-185, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Christopher Armstrong & David Larcker & Che-Lin Su, 2007. "Stock Options and Chief Executive Compensation," Discussion Papers 1447, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    2. Alex Edmans & Xavier Gabaix, 2016. "Executive Compensation: A Modern Primer," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 54(4), pages 1232-1287, December.
    3. Baomin Dong & Guixia Guo & Frank Yong Wang, 2013. "Dynamic Moral Hazard and Executive Stock Options," Pacific Economic Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(2), pages 259-279, May.
    4. Alex Edmans & Xavier Gabaix & Augustin Landier, 2007. "A Calibratable Model of Optimal CEO Incentives in Market Equilibrium," NBER Working Papers 13372, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Jenter, Dirk, 2004. "Executive Compensation, Incentives, and Risk," Working papers 4466-02, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan School of Management.
    6. Chaigneau, Pierre, 2013. "Explaining the structure of CEO incentive pay with decreasing relative risk aversion," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 4-23.
    7. Hongfei Tang, 2014. "Are CEO stock option grants optimal? Evidence from family firms and non-family firms around the Sarbanes–Oxley Act," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 42(2), pages 251-292, February.
    8. Alex Edmans & Xavier Gabaix, 2011. "Tractability in Incentive Contracting," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(9), pages 2865-2894.
    9. Jiong Gong & Ping Jiang & Xiaochuan Xing, 2018. "Compensation Convexity without Utility Restriction," Australian Economic Papers, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(3), pages 238-249, September.
    10. Faynzilberg, Peter S. & Kumar, Praveen, 1997. "Optimal Contracting of Separable Production Technologies," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 21(1-2), pages 15-39, October.
    11. Dirk Yandell, 1988. "Audit Information and Incentives for Efficiency," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 32(1), pages 49-58, March.
    12. Hall, Brian J. & Murphy, Kevin J., 2002. "Stock options for undiversified executives," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 3-42, February.
    13. Bartsch, Elga, 1996. "Enforcement of environmental liability in the case of uncertain causality and asymmetric information," Kiel Working Papers 755, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    14. Steven A. Matthews, 1991. "Renegotiation of Sales Contracts under Moral Hazard," Discussion Papers 950, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    15. Kim, Son Ku & Wang, Susheng, 1998. "Linear Contracts and the Double Moral-Hazard," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 82(2), pages 342-378, October.
    16. Qiang Kang & Qiao Liu, 2010. "Information-Based Stock Trading, Executive Incentives, and the Principal-Agent Problem," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 56(4), pages 682-698, April.
    17. Gutiérrez Arnaiz, Óscar & Salas-Fumás, Vicente, 2008. "Performance standards and optimal incentives," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(1), pages 139-152, March.
    18. Perrin Lefebvre & David Martimort, 2022. "Delegation, capture and endogenous information structures," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 34(3), pages 357-414, July.
    19. Inés Macho-Stadler & David Pérez-Castrillo, 2018. "Moral hazard: Base models and two extensions," Chapters, in: Luis C. Corchón & Marco A. Marini (ed.), Handbook of Game Theory and Industrial Organization, Volume I, chapter 16, pages 453-485, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    20. Hugo Hopenhayn & Arantxa Jarque, 2010. "Unobservable Persistent Productivity and Long Term Contracts," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 13(2), pages 333-349, April.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C60 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - General
    • C61 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Optimization Techniques; Programming Models; Dynamic Analysis
    • J33 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Compensation Packages; Payment Methods
    • M52 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Compensation and Compensation Methods and Their Effects

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ecl:stabus:2049. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/gsstaus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.