Contract Design by Service Providers with Private Effort
Contract Design by Service Providers with Private Effort
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DOI：
10.1287/mnsc.2017.2743
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发表时间：
2017-01
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
H. Zhang;Guangwen Kong;S. Rajagopalan
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文献类型：
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作者：
H. Zhang;Guangwen Kong;S. Rajagopalan
我们研究了三种常用的定价方案的性能——固定费用、基于时间的合同和两部分关税——在服务环境中，买方的估价对卖方是不可见的，卖方的努力对买方可能是可见的，也可能是不可见的，即使买方是根据努力而不是实现的质量收费的。我们表明，在固定费用或两部分关税的情况下，卖方的利润在私人或公共努力下是相同的。在基于时间的合同下，当提供服务的成本低（高）时，卖方将努力保密可能比将其公开更好（更差）；这种权衡也以非单调的方式受到质量不确定程度的影响。我们还发现，当努力是私有的时，基于时间的合同可以在一个相当大的参数制度上做得和两部分关税一样好。
We investigate the performance of three commonly used pricing schemes — fixed fee, time based contract, and two-part tariff — in service contexts where the buyer’s valuation is invisible to the seller and the seller’s effort may or may not be visible to the buyer even though the buyer is charged based on effort instead of realized quality. We show that the seller’s profit is the same under private or public effort in the case of fixed fee or two-part tariff. Under time based contract, the seller may be better (worse) off in keeping effort private than making it public when the cost of providing service is low (high); the trade-off is also affected by the degree of quality uncertainty in a non-monotonic way. We also find that time based contract can do as well as two-part tariff over a sizable parameter regime when effort is private.