Binary Payment Schemes: Moral Hazard and Loss Aversion

Publication Type  Preprints
Author  Fabian Herweg, Daniel Müller, Philipp Weinschenk
Year of Publication  2010
Issue  2010/38
Abstract  We modify the principal-agent model with moral hazard by assuming that the agent is expectation-based loss averse according to Köszegi and Rabin (2006, 2007). The optimal contract is a binary payment scheme even for a rich performance measure, where standard preferences predict a fully contingent contract. The logic is that, due to the stochastic reference point, increasing the number of different wages reduces the agent’s expected utility without providing strong additional incentives. Moreover, for diminutive occurrence probabilities for all signals the agent is rewarded with the fixed bonus if his performance exceeds a certain threshold.
Publisher  Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods
Place Published  Bonn
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Published in:  American Economic Review, vol. 100, pp. 2451-2477, 2010
Supplementary Material  
JEL-Codes  D82, M12, M52