Behavioral Contract Theory on Incentives and Organizational Structures

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K03529
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Public finance/Public economy
• Research Institution: Kwansei Gakuin University
• Principal Investigator: DAIDO Kohei 関西学院大学, 経済学部, 准教授 (70388354)
• Research Collaborator: MUROOKA Takeshi
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: 契約理論 / マルチタスク問題 / シグナリング / インセンティブ

Outline of Final Research Achievements

We study incentive schemes by applying contract theory and behavioral economics. First, we examine multitasking problems where an agent engages in both a contractible and a non-contractible tasks. There is another agent who can contribute to the non-contractible task. The agents play a signaling game: after observing an informed agent's action, an uninformed agent can choose its own action. In contrast to the previous literature, we show that a principal may provide the informed agent with a higher incentive to the contractible task in order for the agents to work more in the non-contractible task. Second, we investigate a multi-agent moral-hazard model where agents are loss averse. In the optimal contract, both high- and low-performance agents are equally rewarded if most agents accomplish their projects; otherwise only high-performance agents are rewarded.

Free Research Field

契約理論