Delegation of Investment Decisions, and Optimal Renumeration of Agents

Assar Lindbeck and Jörgen Weibull

No 1171, Working Paper Series from Research Institute of Industrial Economics

Abstract: We analyze an investor who delegates information acquisition and investment decisions to an agent. The investor cannot monitor the agent’s effort or information. Optimal pay schemes contain bonuses that increase with the net return rate of the investment, but, unlike conventional contracts, at a decreasing rate. Moreover, investments with low return rates are penalized, again unlike conventional contracts. Nevertheless, it may be optimal for the investor to reward the agent above the agent’s reservation utility. We examine the role of the agent’s risk attitude for the shape of the pay scheme, and whether firing after bad investments is a more effective threat than reduced pay. We also analyze how the nature of the contract changes if the agent is given bargaining power.

Keywords: Delegation; Principal-agent; Principal-expert; Investment; Information aquisition; Rational inattention; Contract; Bonus; Penalty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D01 D82 D86 G11 G23 G30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47 pages
Date: 2017-05-22, Revised 2020-08-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cfn, nep-cta, nep-mic and nep-upt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.ifn.se/wfiles/wp/wp1171.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Delegation of investment decisions, and optimal remuneration of agents (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:1171

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series from Research Institute of Industrial Economics Research Institute of Industrial Economics, Box 55665, SE-102 15 Stockholm, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Elisabeth Gustafsson ().