Restoring Trust in Finance: From Principal-Agent to Principled Agent

Gordon Menzies, Thomas Simpson, Donald Hay and David Vines
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Thomas Simpson: Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford

No 48, Working Paper Series from Economics Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney

Abstract: Bonuses in finance represents a bad equilbrium among multiple equilibria. Motivating agents with bonuses can promote untruthfulness, via motivation crowding out, justifying the decision to pay them bonuses. In the equilibrium that works in other professions, moral norms are upheld enough to not require bonuses. Escaping the bad equilibrium is difficult if banks engage in an �optimal� amount of deceit (moral optimization). Restoring trust instead requires that untruthfulness be ruled out a priori (moral prioritization). Reinstating truth telling in finance must contend with a tendency for ethics to be confined to the private domain and motivation crowding out in finance.

Keywords: Bank Bonuses; Trust; Deregulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E52 G21 G28 H12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2018-07-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cfn, nep-hpe, nep-hrm, nep-mac and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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https://www.uts.edu.au/sites/default/files/2018-07/ER%201.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Restoring Trust in Finance: From Principal–Agent to Principled Agent (2019)
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