Collective Reputation and Relational Contracts

本项目研究声誉和长期关系在克服许多经济交易中出现的激励问题方面的作用。项目的第一部分研究集体声誉。就像个人因公平交易或能力或能力而获得声誉一样，他们所属的公司、组织、专业协会和其他团体也会获得声誉。这些团体不是单一的行动者。他们的声誉反映了其成员的特点和行为。反过来，当个体成员关心自己的声誉时，他们也会关心并受到群体声誉的影响。我研究个人行为、群体声誉和群体组成如何在动态环境中共同进化。分析的问题包括：为什么组织和机构的声誉倾向于随着时间的推移而持续；个人是否倾向于仅仅基于声誉考虑而自我选择加入群体；以及群体何时会做出集体决策，采用确保成员潜在能力和良好行为的机制。项目的第二部分研究持续关系中的激励条款。在早期的工作中，我开发了一个激励契约的重复博弈模型，并表明在各种情况下，最优的自我执行协议（关系契约）可以采取一种简单的固定形式，便于详细描述。这个问题的动机是对组织设计问题的兴趣——考虑到即使是精心设计的具有法律约束力的合同也可能留下很大的自由裁量余地，公司如何才能最优地构建与员工、供应商、客户和债权人的关系。这项工作的继续考虑到与多个贸易伙伴签订关系合同。一个主要的问题是，一家公司与某一特定组成部分（比如，一组员工）的关系状况是否应该取决于公司行为的所有方面（比如，它对所有其他员工的待遇），还是仅仅取决于那些直接相关的方面。其基本论点是，尽管违背多边合同的诱惑较小，但在不确定的环境中，此类合同的成本很高，因为即使是较小的意外冲击也可能需要大量的调整成本，或导致一系列关系破裂。

This project studies the role of reputation and long-term relationships in overcoming the incentive problems that arise in many economic transactions. The first part of the project studies collective reputation. Just as individuals develop reputations for fair dealing or competence or ability, so do the firms, organizations, professional associations and other groups to which they belong. These groups are not unitary actors. Their reputations reflect the characteristics and behavior of their members. In turn, when individual members care about their own reputations, they will be concerned with and influenced by the group's reputation. I investigate how individual behavior, group reputation, and group composition co-evolve in a dynamic setting. Among the questions analyzed are why organizational and institutional reputations tend to persist over time, whether individuals will tend to self-select into groups solely on the basis of reputational concerns, and when groups will make collective decisions to employ mechanisms that ensure the underlying competence and good behavior of members. The second part of the project studies incentive provision in ongoing relationships. In earlier work, I developed a repeated game model of incentive contracting and showed that in a variety of settings optimal self-enforcing agreements (relational contracts) could take a simple stationary form that facilitated detailed characterization. The problem was motivated by an interest in problems of organizational design --- how firms might optimally structure relationships with employees, suppliers, customers and creditors taking into account that even well-conceived legally binding contracts might leave significant room for discretion. A continuation of this work considers relational contracting with multiple trading partners. A main question is whether the status of a firm's relationship with a given constituent (say, one set of employees) ought to be contingent on all aspects of the firm's behavior (say, its treatment of all other employees), or just those aspects that are directly relevant. The basic argument is that the while there is less temptation to renege on a multilateral contract, such contracts are costly in uncertain environments because even minor unanticipated shocks may necessitate large adjustment costs or cause a whole series of relationships to unravel.