The Principal Agent Model


Book Description

The economics of asymmetric information has been the most important new tool of economic analysis and has proved powerful in explaining many aspects of the functioning of the economy. This anthology brings together every major paper in the field.




Formal and Relational Incentives in a Multitask Model


Book Description

This paper studies the optimal contracts in a multitask model when a principal-agent relationship is long-term. If some outcomes are unverifiable, then the contracts have to satisfy the self-enforcing condition. I characterize the optimal contract in terms of the discount rate, the cost substitutes, and the weight of the unverifiable outcomes relative to the principal's payoff. Then, as the discount rate increases, the incentive to verifiable outcome (formal incentive) changes discontinuously and non-monotonically while the incentive to the unverifiable outcome (relational incentive) changes discontinuously but monotonically.







Essays on Contract Design and Incentive Provision


Book Description

Contract theory, which emphasizes the importance of unverifiable actions and private information, has been a highly active field of research in microeconomics in the last decades. This thesis is divided into two parts. Part I consists of three chapters that study contract-theoretic models which are motivated by the classic procurement problem of a principal who wants an agent to deliver a certain good or service. In such models it is typically assumed that decision makers are interested in their own monetary payoffs only. Moreover, they have unlimited cognitive abilities and behave in a perfectly rational way. Yet, in practice people often do not behave this way. While empirical research is very difficult in contract theory, laboratory experiments have recently turned out to be an important source of data. In Part II, three experimental studies are presented that investigate contract-theoretic problems brought up in Part I.




Performance Budgeting


Book Description

This book examines the theory and practice of performance budgeting, which aims make government more effective by linking the funding of government agencies to the results they deliver. Combining thematic studies and case studies, it clearly presents the diverse range of contemporary performance budgeting models and examines their effectiveness.




The Theory of Incentives


Book Description




Game Theory for Next Generation Wireless and Communication Networks


Book Description

Discover the very latest game-theoretic approaches for designing, modeling, and optimizing emerging wireless communication networks and systems with this unique text. Providing a unified and comprehensive treatment throughout, it explains basic concepts and theories for designing novel distributed wireless networking mechanisms, describes emerging game-theoretic tools from an engineering perspective, and provides an extensive overview of recent applications. A wealth of new tools is covered - including matching theory and games with bounded rationality - and tutorial chapters show how to use these tools to solve current and future wireless networking problems in areas such as 5G networks, network virtualization, software defined networks, cloud computing, the Internet of Things, context-aware networks, green communications, and security. This is an ideal resource for telecommunications engineers, and researchers in industry and academia who are working on the design of efficient, scalable, and robust communication protocols for future wireless networks, as well as graduate students in these fields.