Bonus pools and the informativeness principle

Lorens Imhof and Matthias Kräkel

European Economic Review, 2014, vol. 66, issue C, 180-191

Abstract: Previous work on moral-hazard problems has shown that, under certain conditions, bonus contracts create optimal individual incentives for risk-neutral workers. In our paper we demonstrate that, if a firm employs at least two workers, it may further benefit from combining worker compensation via a bonus-pool contract and relative performance evaluation. Such combination leads to saved rents under a wide class of luck distributions. In addition, if the employer is wealth-constrained, complementing individual bonus contracts by the possibility of pooling bonuses can increase the set of implementable effort levels. All our results hold even though workers' outputs are technically and stochastically independent so that, in view of Holmstrom's informativeness principle, individual bonus contracts would be expected to dominate bonus-pool contracts.

Keywords: Contract; Hazard rate; Informativeness principle; Limited liability; Relative performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D86 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:eecrev:v:66:y:2014:i:c:p:180-191

DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2013.12.004

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