Subjective Performance Evaluation of Employees with Biased Beliefs

Matteo; SANTOS-PINTO, Luís Pedro Foschi,
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Matteo Foschi () and Luis Santos-Pinto ()

No ECO 2017/08, Economics Working Papers from European University Institute

Abstract: This paper analyses how worker optimism (and pessimism) affects subjective performance evaluation (SPE) contracts. We let an optimistic (pessimistic) worker overestimate (underestimate) the probability of observing an acceptable performance. The firm is better informed about performance than the worker and knows the worker's bias. We show that optimism (and pessimism): i) changes the optimal incentive scheme under SPE, ii) lowers the deadweight loss associated with SPE contracts, iii) can lead to a Pareto improvement by simultaneously lowering the firm's expected wage cost and raising the worker's expected compensation. In addition, we show that worker pessimism can lead to SPE contracts without a deadweight loss, in contrast to the standard case in the literature.

Keywords: Optimism; Overconfidence; Contract; Moral Hazard; Biased Beliefs; Mechanism Design. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D82 D84 D86 J41 J7 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-cta and nep-hrm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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