Ex ante Randomization in Agency Models

John C. Fellingham, Young K. Kwon and D. Paul Newman

RAND Journal of Economics, 1984, vol. 15, issue 2, 290-301

Abstract: We consider how a principal can use randomized strategies in designing optimal contracts in agency settings. We distinguish between ex post randomization (over fee schedules following act selection by the agent) and ex ante randomization (over fee schedules before act selection). We show that ex ante randomization may be efficient in both full information and private information settings under certain assumptions regarding preferences and the production technology. It is particularly significant that additive separability and concavity of the agent's utility function as well as concavity of the production function do not rule out efficient ex ante randomized contracts in private information settings, although, as is known, they rule out ex post randomization.

Date: 1984
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0741-6261%2819842 ... 3B2-%23&origin=repec full text (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to JSTOR subscribers. See http://www.jstor.org for details.

Related works:
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:rje:randje:v:15:y:1984:i:summer:p:290-301

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://editorialexp ... i-bin/rje_online.cgi

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in RAND Journal of Economics from The RAND Corporation
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().