Common agency with informed principals

We analyze a common agency game under asymmetric information on the preferences of the non-cooperating principals in a public good context. Asymmetric information introduces incentive compatibility constraints which rationalize the requirement of truthfulness made in the earlier literature on common agency games under complete information. There exists a large class of differentiable equilibria which are ex post inefficient and exhibit free-riding. We then characterize some interim efficient equilibria. Finally, there exists also a unique equilibrium allocation which is robust to random perturbations. This focal equilibrium is characterized for any distribution of types.

Atração de investimentos como instrumento de política industrial: o caso do ceará no período 1985-2002

This paper aims to assess the performance of credit and fiscal mechanisms in attracting industrial investment to the state of Ceará during 1985-2002, a period characterized by the political and administrative continuity which begun with the implementation of the so-called "Plan of Changes", during the term in office of former state governor Tasso Jereissati. In order to accomplish that, a survey was conducted of the state's credit, fiscal and infrastructure incentive mechanisms, industrial policy and the period's political context, as well as data from the Department of Industry and Commerce and on the economic performance of the state of Ceará. Over 700 industrial businesses were found to have been attracted into the state by means of the Industrial Investment Attraction Program, which amounted to a process of industry expansion while the country as a whole was going through a period of deindustrialization. The analysis points out that, if on one hand, the industrialization model then adopted was able to generate economic growth, on the other hand, it increased income concentration and could not drive industry into the less developed areas across the state's interior, as expected by Ceará's state government officials.

The brazilian education quality index (Ideb): measurement and incentives upgrades

The increasing availability of social statistics in Latin America opens new possibilities in terms of accountability and incentive mechanisms for policy makers. This paper addresses these issues within the institutional context of the Brazilian educational system. We build a theoretical model based on the theory of incentives to analyze the role of the recently launched Basic Education Development Index (Ideb) in the provision of incentives at the sub-national level. The first result is to demonstrate that an education target system has the potential to improve the allocation of resources to education through conditional transfers to municipalities and schools. Second, we analyze the local government’s decision about how to allocate its education budget when seeking to accomplish the different objectives contemplated by the index, which involves the interaction between its two components, average proficiency and the passing rate. We discuss as well policy issues concerning the implementation of the synthetic education index in the light of this model arguing that there is room for improving the Ideb’s methodology itself. In addition, we analyze the desirable properties of an ideal education index and we argue in favor of an ex-post relative learning evaluation system for different municipalities (schools) based on the value added across different grades

Common agency with informed principals

We analyze a common agency game under asymmetric information on the preferences of the non-cooperating principals. Asymmetric information introduces incentive compatibility constraints which rationalize the requirement of truthfulness made in the earlier literature on common agency games under complete information. There exists a large class of differentiable equilibria which are ex post inefficient and exhibit free-riding. We then characterize some interim efficient equilibria. Finally, there exists also a unique equilibrium allocation which is robust to random perturbations. This focal equilibrium is characterized for any distribution of types.

Contrato típico de concessão comercial : sugestão de inserção de cláusula escalonada de mediação e arbitragem nas convenções de marca para solução de conflitos entre concessionários : um passo adiante nas disputas dos distribuidores

A partir de uma visão contemporânea do contrato o trabalho procurou, (i) reconstruir o marco teórico sobre qual se funda o contrato de concessão comercial no Brasil, registrando uma nota histórica sobre a criação da Lei nº 6.729/1979; (ii) avaliar a validade da lei estudada sob o enfoque do regime constitucional vigente; (iii) analisar o regime jurídico das convenções de marca previstas na lei e a utilização dessas convenções como mecanismos de incentivo de atuação dos concessionários dentro de suas respectivas áreas operacionais, conceituando-as; (iv) sugerir mecanismos de solução de conflitos decorrentes da atuação, pelos concessionários, fora de sua respectiva área operacional, especialmente a cláusula de mediação e arbitragem

Contingent Edis: a new contractual framework for minimizing the risk of incentive failures

Granting economic development incentives (or “EDIs”) has become commonplace throughout the United States, but the efficiency of these mechanisms is generally unwarranted. Both the politicians granting, and the companies seeking, EDIs have incentives to overestimate the EDIs benefits. For politicians, ribbon–cutting ceremonies can be the highly desirable opportunity to please political allies and financiers, and the same time that they demonstrate to the population that they are successful in promoting economic growth – even when the population would be better off otherwise. In turn, businesses are naturally prone to seek governmental aid. This explains in part why EDIs often “fail” (i.e. don’t pay–off). To increase transparency and mitigate the risk of EDI failure, local and state governments across the country have created a number of accountability mechanisms. The general trait of these accountability mechanisms is that they apply controls to some of the sub–risks that underlie the risk of EDI failure. These sub–risks include the companies receiving EDIs not generating the expected number of jobs, not investing enough in their local facilities, not attracting the expected additional businesses investments to the jurisdiction, etc. The problem with such schemes is that they tackle the problem of EDI failure very loosely. They are too narrow and leave multiplier effects uncontrolled. I propose novel contractual framework for implementing accountability mechanisms. My suggestion is to establish controls on the risk of EDI failure itself, leaving its underlying sub–risks uncontrolled. I call this mechanism “Contingent EDIs”, because the EDIs are made contingent on the government achieving a preset target that benchmarks the risk of EDI failure. If the target is met, the EDIs will ex post kick in; if not, then the EDIs never kick in.

A note on convergence of Peck-Shell and Green-Lin mechanisms in the Diamond-Dybvig model

We study the effects of population size in the Peck-Shell analysis of bank runs. We find that a contract featuring equal-treatment for almost all depositors of the same type approximates the optimum. Because the approximation also satisfies Green-Lin incentive constraints, when the planner discloses positions in the queue, welfare in these alternative specifications are sandwiched. Disclosure, however, it is not needed since our approximating contract is not subject to runs.

Organizational design and incentive provision

We model the trade-off between the balance and the strength of incentives implicit in the choice between hierarchical and matrix or- ganizational structures. We show that managerial biases determine which structure is optimal: hierarchical forms are preferred when biases are low, while matrix structures are preferred when biases are high. Moreover, the results show that there is always a level of bias for which matrix design can achieve the expected profit obtained by shareholders if they could directly control the firm. We also show that the main trade-off, i.e., hierarchical versus matrix structure is preserved under asymmetric levels of bias among managers and when low-level workers perceive activities with complementary efforts.

Biased managers, organizational design, and incentive provision

We model the tradeoff between the balance and the strength of incentives implicit in the choice between hierarchical and matrix organizational structures. We show that managerial biases determine which structure is optimal: hierarchical forms are preferred when biases are low, while matrix structures are preferred when biases are high.

Contract enforcement and incentive compatibility in large economies with differential information: the role of exact feasibility

We consider exchange economies with a continuum of agents and differential information about finitely many states of nature. It was proved in Einy, Moreno and Shitovitz (2001) that if we allow for free disposal in the market clearing (feasibility) constraints then an irreducible economy has a competitive (or Walrasian expectations) equilibrium, and moreover, the set of competitive equilibrium allocations coincides with the private core. However when feasibility is defined with free disposal, competitive equilibrium allocations may not be incentive compatible and contracts may not be enforceable (see e.g. Glycopantis, Muir and Yannelis (2002)). This is the main motivation for considering equilibrium solutions with exact feasibility. We first prove that the results in Einy et al. (2001) are still valid without free-disposal. Then we define an incentive compatibility property motivated by the issue of contracts’ execution and we prove that every Pareto optimal exact feasible allocation is incentive compatible, implying that contracts of a competitive or core allocations are enforceable.

Os extremos do ciclo de vida: trabalho infantil e aposentadoria precoce

Este trabalho procura analisar dois problemas bastante graves que afligem a sociedade brasileira. De um lado, a entrada precoce na força de trabalho, que tem sua face mais perversa no trabalho infantil; de outro, a saída também precoce da força de trabalho de adultos em idade ainda produtiva. Ambos fenômenos são empobrecedores para a sociedade e atuam como mecanismo de geração e perpetuação de pobreza. O trabalho infantil, discutido na primeira parte do trabalho, prejudica a educação. A saída precoce da força de trabalho, analisado na segunda parte do trabalho, é um desperdício de recursos. Na terceira parte é desenvolvida uma análise formal que procura mostrar o quanto um sistema de aposentadorias como o sistema previdenciário brasileiro, que garante uma renda por vida às pessoas após um certo anos de trabalho, pode induzir escolhas que embora ótimas do ponto de vista privado são bastante custosas do ponto vista social. Especificamente, procura-se mostrar como esta legislação pode incentivar tanto a entrada quanto a saída precoce do mercado de trabalho.

As percepções dos funcionários sobre as dimensões formais do Programa de controle de uma Instituição Bancária 2003

This work was developed in a financial institution, with the goal of identifying and analyzing the perception of the employees of the areas defined as the resource focus, according the formal dimension of the actual control program implemented in the institution, with the purpose of exploring the vulnerable points and the conflicting related to the increasing of performance of the employee¿s activities and new tools, concepts and news studies case. The work was conducted with the existing base of theories and concepts, following organizational controls, approachs like Elzioni¿s (1964), Amat¿s and Gomes¿s (2001) and Sturdy¿s, Knights¿s and Willmott¿s (1992). The research done was characterized as descriptive because it aims to describe the perceptions, expectations and the employee¿s profiles in the studied organization, such as field research, because it has the objective of promoting interviews and collecting the primary data and documental, because it will also be performed the analysis of the internal documents of the organization. The research also refers to a certain study case with a sectional cut and predominantly quantitative, but with support in quantitative technics for the initial tabulation of data that were analysed afterwords in interpretative form. The characteristics of the financial institution researched of the control program, has been formed predominantly of post-bureaucratic mechanisms focusing in results, in a hegemonic way expanded, of the utility type with strong alienatorian influences in the employees and with low incentive power, related to the increase of the employee¿s compromises. This way, the control program is noticed by the employees as a monitoring mechanism of actions and results, developed only to increase the institution profits, regardless of the impacts of the physical and emotional aspects and increasing, intuitively, the levels of internal dissatisfaction.

As percepções dos funcionários sobre as dimensões formais do programa de controle de uma instituição bancária um estudo de caso

Este trabalho foi desenvolvido em uma instituição financeira, com o objetivo de identificar e analisar a percepção dos funcionários das áreas definidas como foco da pesquisa, quanto às dimensões formais do atual programa de controle implementado na instituição, buscando explorar pontos vulneráveis e conflitantes ao aumento da performance das atividades dos funcionários e novas ferramentas, conceitos e frentes de estudos. O trabalho foi elaborado com base nas teorias e conceitos existentes quanto aos controles organizacionais, como as abordagens de Etzioni (1964), Amat e Gomes (2001) e Sturdy, Knights e Willmott (1992). A pesquisa realizada se caracteriza como descritiva, porque visa descrever as percepções, expectativas e os perfis dos funcionários da organização estudada. Os dados primários foram coletados por meio de entrevistas e os dados secundários através de documentos internos da organização. A pesquisa também se refere a um estudo de caso, com corte seccional e, predominantemente, qualitativo, mas com suporte em técnicas quantitativas para a tabulação inicial dos dados que posteriormente foram analisados de forma interpretativa. A conclusão do trabalho foi de que as características do programa de controle da instituição financeira pesquisada, é constituído, predominantemente, de mecanismos pós-burocrático, focado em resultados, de modo hegemônico expandido e do tipo utilitário, com fortes influências alienadoras nos funcionários e com baixo poder de incentivo, no tocante ao aumento do compromisso dos funcionários. Assim, o programa de controle é percebido pelos funcionários como um mecanismo de monitoramento de ações e resultados, desenvolvido apenas para aumentar os lucros da instituição, sem se preocupar com os impactos nos seus aspectos fisicos e emocionais e aumentando, intuitivamente, os níveis de insatisfação interno.

Three principles of competitive nonlinear pricing

We make three contributions to the theory of contracting under asymmetric information. First, we establish a competitive analog to the revelation principIe which we call the implementation principIe. This principIe provides a complete characterization of all incentive compatible, indirect contracting mechanisms in terms of contract catalogs (or menus), and allows us to conclude that in competi tive contracting situations, firms in choosing their contracting strategies can restrict attention, without loss of generality, to contract catalogs. Second, we establish a competi tive taxation principIe. This principIe, a refinement of the implementation principIe, provides a complete characterization of all implementable nonlinear pricing schedules in terms of product-price catalogs and allows us to reduce any game played over nonlinear pricing schedules to a strategically equivalent game played over product-price catalogs. Third, using the competitive taxation principIe and a recent result due to Reny (1999) on the existence of Nash equilibria in discontinuous games, we demonstrate the existence of a N ash equilibrium for the mixed extension of the nonlinear pricing game.

Unemployment insurance an analysis of optimal mechanisms under aggregate shocks

The purpose of this work is to provide a brief overview of the literature on the optimal design of unemployment insurance systems by analyzing some of the most influential articles published over the last three decades on the subject and extend the main results to a multiple aggregate shocks environment. The properties of optimal contracts are discussed in light of the key assumptions commonly made in theoretical publications on the area. Moreover, the implications of relaxing each of these hypothesis is reckoned as well. The analysis of models of only one unemployment spell starts from the seminal work of Shavell and Weiss (1979). In a simple and common setting, unemployment benefits policies, wage taxes and search effort assignments are covered. Further, the idea that the UI distortion of the relative price of leisure and consumption is the only explanation for the marginal incentives to search for a job is discussed, putting into question the reduction in labor supply caused by social insurance, usually interpreted as solely an evidence of a dynamic moral hazard caused by a substitution effect. In addition, the paper presents one characterization of optimal unemployment insurance contracts in environments in which workers experience multiple unemployment spells. Finally, an extension to multiple aggregate shocks environment is considered. The paper ends with a numerical analysis of the implications of i.i.d. shocks to the optimal unemployment insurance mechanism.