Do Tournaments Solve the Adverse Selection Problem?
Do Tournaments Solve the Adverse Selection Problem?
复制标题
DOI：
10.2139/ssrn.2341925
复制
发表时间：
2013-10
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Theofanis Tsoulouhas
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Theofanis Tsoulouhas
本文为锦标赛分析中的一个谜题提供了一个解决方案，即为什么在某些商业实践环境中没有代理人歧视或差别合同。本文研究了委托人与多个代理人签订合同的问题，这些代理人的活动受到共同冲击。共同冲击的存在要求使用相对绩效评估来最大限度地减少道德风险的成本。但是，在逆向选择的额外存在下，分析表明，可能没有必要通过提供菜单预先筛选。这是因为委托人在事后对代理类型有了更好的了解，通过实现共同的不确定性，可以有效地惩罚或奖励代理。因此，与没有常见不确定性的标准逆向选择问题（委托人总是从事前筛选中受益）不同，研究表明，通过相对绩效评估进行事后排序减少了通过菜单进行事前筛选的范围，并且如果已知代理人不是非常异构，则可以完全消除它。这与观察到的行业实践是一致的，在这些行业中，主要的薪酬机制是员工之间统一的基本竞赛。分析表明，通过使用相对绩效指标而不是绝对绩效指标，拥有非本质异质性员工的公司不仅可以缓解代理问题，而且也不需要通过筛选菜单提取代理事先关于其先天能力的私人信息。
This paper provides a solution to a puzzle in the analysis of tournaments, that of why there is no agent discrimination or differential contracting in certain business practice settings. The paper examines the problem of a principal contracting with multiple agents whose activities are subject to common shocks. The presence of common shocks invites the use of relative performance evaluation to minimize the costs of moral hazard. But, in the additional presence of adverse selection, the analysis shows that there may be no need for ex ante screening through menus of offers. This is so because the principal becomes better informed ex post about agent types, via the realization of common uncertainty, and can effectively penalize or reward the agents ex post. Thus, unlike the standard adverse selection problem without common uncertainty where the principal always benefits from ex ante screening, it is shown that ex post sorting through relative performance evaluation reduces the scope for ex ante screening through menus, and can eliminate it completely if agents are known to not be very heterogeneous. This is consistent with observed practice in industries where the primary compensation mechanism is a cardinal tournament which is uniform among employees. The analysis connotes that by using relative instead of absolute performance measures, firms with employees who are not substantially heterogeneous not only can alleviate the agency problem, but there is also no need to extract the agents' ex ante private information about their innate abilities via a screening menu.