Mixed up? that's good for motivation

Eloïc Peyrache ()
Additional contact information
Eloïc Peyrache: GREGH - Groupement de Recherche et d'Etudes en Gestion à HEC - HEC Paris - Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: We show that career concerns can arise in the absence of ex ante uncertainty about an agent's type, if his unobservable actions influence future productivity. Implementing effort in mixed strategies allows the principal to endogenously introduce uncertainty about the agent's ex post productivity and generate reputational incentives. Creating such ambiguity can be optimal for the principal, even though this exposes the agent to additional risk and reduces output. This finding for an environment with imperfect commitment contrasts with standard agency models, where implementing mixed strategy actions typically is not optimal if pure strategies can also be implemented.

Keywords: Incentive contracts; Reputation; Mixed strategies; Human capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-01-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Economic Theory, 2008, Vol.34,n°1, pp.107-125. ⟨10.1007/s00199-007-0206-y⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:hal:journl:hal-00463444

DOI: 10.1007/s00199-007-0206-y

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().