Contract theory

This article is about the economic analysis of contracts. For legal definitions and contract law, see Contract. For a less technical discussion of a highly related topic, see Principal-agent problem.

In economics, contract theory studies how economic actors can and do construct contractual arrangements, generally in the presence of asymmetric information. Because of its connections with both agency and incentives, contract theory is often categorized within a field known as Law and economics. One prominent application of it is the design of optimal schemes of managerial compensation. In the field of economics, the first formal treatment of this topic was given by Kenneth Arrow in the 1960s. In 2016, Oliver Hart and Bengt R. Holmström both received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for their work on contract theory, covering many topics from CEO pay to privatizations.

A standard practice in the microeconomics of contract theory is to represent the behaviour of a decision maker under certain numerical utility structures, and then apply an optimization algorithm to identify optimal decisions. Such a procedure has been used in the contract theory framework to several typical situations, labeled moral hazard, adverse selection and signalling. The spirit of these models lies in finding theoretical ways to motivate agents to take appropriate actions, even under an insurance contract. The main results achieved through this family of models involve: mathematical properties of the utility structure of the principal and the agent, relaxation of assumptions, and variations of the time structure of the contract relationship, among others. It is customary to model people as maximizers of some von Neumann–Morgenstern utility functions, as stated by expected utility theory.

Main models of agency problems

Moral hazard

In moral hazard models, the information asymmetry is the principal's inability to observe and/or verify the agent's action. Performance-based contracts that depend on observable and verifiable output can often be employed to create incentives for the agent to act in the principal's interest. When agents are risk-averse, however, such contracts are generally only second-best because incentivization precludes full insurance.

The typical moral hazard model is formulated as follows. The principal solves:

$\max _{w(\cdot )}E\left[y({\hat {e}})-w(y({\hat {e}}))\right]$

subject to the agent's "individual rationality (IR)" constraint,

$E\left[u(w(y(e)))-c(e)\right]\geq {\bar {u}}$

and the agent's "incentive compatibility (IC)" constraint,

${\hat {e}}=\arg \max _{e}E\left[u(w(y(e)))-c(e)\right]\geq {\bar {u}}$,

where $w(\cdot )$ is the wage as a function of output $y$, which in turn is a function of effort:$e$.

$c(e)$ represents the cost of effort, and reservation utility is given by ${\bar {u}}$.

$u(\cdot )$ is the "utility function", which is concave for the risk-averse agent, is convex for the risk-prone agent, and is linear for the risk-neutral agent.

If the agent is risk-neutral and there are no bounds on transfer payments, the fact that the agent's effort is unobservable (i.e., it is a "hidden action") does not pose a problem. In this case, the same outcome can be achieved that would be attained with verifiable effort: The agent chooses the so-called "first-best" effort level that maximizes the expected total surplus of the two parties. Specifically, the principal can give the realized output to the agent, but let the agent make a fixed up-front payment. The agent is then a "residual claimant" and will maximize the expected total surplus minus the fixed payment. Hence, the first-best effort level maximizes the agent's payoff, and the fixed payment can be chosen such that in equilibrium the agent's expected payoff equals his or her reservation utility (which is what the agent would get if no contract was written). Yet, if the agent is risk-averse, there is a trade-off between incentives and insurance. Moreover, if the agent is risk-neutral but wealth-constrained, the agent cannot make the fixed up-front payment to the principal, so the principal must leave a "limited liability rent" to the agent (i.e., the agent earns more than his or her reservation utility).

The moral hazard model with risk aversion was pioneered by Steven Shavell, Sanford J. Grossman, Oliver D. Hart, and others in the 1970s and 1980s. It has been extended to the case of repeated moral hazard by William P. Rogerson and to the case of multiple tasks by Bengt Holmström and Paul Milgrom. The moral hazard model with risk-neutral but wealth-constrained agents has also been extended to settings with repeated interaction and multiple tasks. While it is difficult to test models with hidden action empirically (since there is no field data on unobservable variables), the premise of contract theory that incentives matter has been successfully tested in the field. Moreover, contract-theoretic models with hidden actions have been directly tested in laboratory experiments.

Adverse selection

In adverse selection models, the principal is not informed about a certain characteristic of the agent at the time the contract is written. The characteristic is called the agent's "type". For example, health insurance is more likely to be purchased by people who are more likely to get sick. In this case, the agent's type is his or her health status, which is privately known by the agent. Another prominent example is public procurement contracting: The government agency (the principal) does not know the private firm's cost. In this case, the private firm is the agent and the agent's type is the cost level.

In adverse selection models, there is typically too little trade (i.e., there is a so-called "downward distortion" of the trade level compared to a "first-best" benchmark situation with complete information), except when the agent is of the best possible type (which is known as the "no distortion at the top" property). The principal offers a menu of contracts to the agent; the menu is called "incentive-compatible" if the agent picks the contract that was designed for his or her type. In order to make the agent reveal the true type, the principal has to leave an information rent to the agent (i.e., the agent earns more than his or her reservation utility, which is what the agent would get if no contract was written). Adverse selection theory has been pioneered by Roger Myerson, Eric Maskin, and others in the 1980s. More recently, adverse selection theory has been tested in laboratory experiments and in the field.

Adverse selection theory has been expanded in several directions, e.g. by endogenizing the information structure (so the agent can decide whether or not to gather private information) and by taking into consideration social preferences and bounded rationality.

Incomplete contracts

Contract theory also utilizes the notion of a complete contract, which is thought of as a contract that specifies the legal consequences of every possible state of the world. More recent developments known as the theory of incomplete contracts, pioneered by Oliver Hart and his coauthors, study the incentive effects of parties' inability to write complete contingent contracts, e.g. concerning relationship-specific investments. A leading application of the incomplete contracting paradigm is the Grossman-Hart-Moore property rights approach to the theory of the firm (see Hart, 1995).

Because it would be impossibly complex and costly for the parties to an agreement to make their contract complete, the law provides default rules which fill in the gaps in the actual agreement of the parties.

During the last 20 years, much effort has gone into the analysis of dynamic contracts. Important early contributors to this literature include, among others, Edward J. Green, Stephen Spear, and Sanjay Srivastava.

Examples

• George Akerlof described adverse selection in the market for used cars.
• In certain models, such as Michael Spence's job-market model, the agent can signal his type to the principal which may help to resolve the problem.

See also

• Agency cost
• Allocative efficiency
• Complete contract
• Incomplete contracts
• Clawback
• Contract
• Contract awarding
• Default rule
• Mechanism design
• New institutional economics
• Perverse incentive

External links

• Bolton, Patrick and Mathias Dewatripont, 2005.: Contract Theory. MIT Press. Description and preview.
• Dutta, Prajit, and Roy Radner, 1994. "Moral Hazard", in Robert Aumann and Sergiu Hart (eds.). Handbook of game theory. Elsevier. pp. 870–903
• Hart, Oliver, 1995. Firms, Contracts, and Financial Structure. Oxford University Press.
• Laffont, Jean-Jacques, and David Martimort, 2002. The Theory of Incentives: The Principal-Agent Model. Description, "Introduction," & down for chapter links. (Princeton University Press, 2002)
• Martimort, David, 2008. "contract theory," The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2nd Edition. Abstract.
• Salanié, Bernard, 1997. The Economics of Contracts: A Primer. MIT Press, Description (2nd ed., 2005) and chapter-preview links.
• Tirole, Jean, 2006. The Theory of Corporate Finance. Princeton University Press. Description.