Optimal Product Quality under Asymmetric Information and Moral Hazard

John Kambhu

Bell Journal of Economics, 1982, vol. 13, issue 2, 483-492

Abstract: In the use of incentive contracts to compel a supplier to produce a product of optimal quality, the supplier's payoff typically depends on observed product quality. When the observable measure of quality employed in the contract varies also with the buyer's care or maintenance of the product, it becomes impossible to impute the product's performance to two unobservable casual determinants: innate product quality and buyer's care. In this article we characterize and give examples of the types of mechanisms that can be used to obtain the optimum optimorum allocation. In the context of product quality and product liability problems there exist mechanisms that can avoid the moral hazard problem.

Date: 1982
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