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。第一部分研究集体声誉。正如个人因公平交易或能力或才干而建立声誉一样，他们所属的公司、组织、专业协会和其他团体也是如此。这些群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，他们也会关心群体的声誉，并受到群体声誉的影响。我调查个人行为，群体声誉和群体组成如何在动态环境中共同演变。在分析的问题是为什么组织和机构的声誉往往会随着时间的推移而持续，个人是否会倾向于自我选择到组的声誉问题的基础上，以及当组将作出集体决定，以雇用机制，确保潜在的能力和良好的行为的成员。第二部分研究了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，并表明在各种环境中，最佳的自我执行协议（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-公司如何最佳地构建与雇员、供应商、客户和债权人的关系，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权。这项工作的继续考虑与多个贸易伙伴的关系合同。一个主要的问题是，企业与某一特定组成部分（比如说，一组员工）的关系状态是否应该取决于企业行为的所有方面（比如说，它对所有其他员工的待遇），或者仅仅是那些直接相关的方面。基本论点是，虽然违背多边契约的诱惑较小，但在不确定的环境中，这种契约的代价很高，因为即使是轻微的意外冲击也可能需要巨大的调整成本，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.