[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedbqu/rpa18-1.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Optimal Delegation Under Unknown Bias: The Role of Concavity

Author

Listed:
  • Noam Tanner
Abstract
A principal is uncertain of an agent's preferences and cannot provide monetary transfers. The principal, however, does control the discretion granted to the agent. In this paper, we provide a simple characterization of when it is optimal for the principal to screen by offering different terms of discretion to the agent. When the principal's utility is sufficiently concave, it is optimal for the principal to pool and to offer all agents the same discretion. Thus, for any number of agents and any distribution over agent preferences, the optimal contract is simple: the principal sets a cap and forbids actions above this cap (interval delegation). For less concave preferences, it is optimal for the principal to screen. The principal benefits by providing agents a choice between interval delegation and gap delegation, which allows for more extreme actions but prohibits intermediate actions. Moreover, we provide new intuition for the optimality of interval delegation when the principal knows the agent's preferences: the payoff distributions generated by sets containing gaps are mean-preserving spreads of those generated by intervals.

Suggested Citation

  • Noam Tanner, 2018. "Optimal Delegation Under Unknown Bias: The Role of Concavity," Supervisory Research and Analysis Working Papers RPA 18-1, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedbqu:rpa18-1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/risk-and-policy-analysis/2018/optimal-delegation-under-unknown-bias-the-role-of-concavity.aspx
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.bostonfed.org/-/media/Documents/Workingpapers/PDF/2018/rpa1801.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alexander Frankel, 2014. "Aligned Delegation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(1), pages 66-83, January.
    2. Ambrus, Attila & Egorov, Georgy, 2017. "Delegation and nonmonetary incentives," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 101-135.
    3. Jensen, Michael C, 1986. "Agency Costs of Free Cash Flow, Corporate Finance, and Takeovers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(2), pages 323-329, May.
    4. Tracy R. Lewis & David E.M. Sappington, 1989. "Regulatory Options and Price-Cap Regulation," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 20(3), pages 405-416, Autumn.
    5. Kovác, Eugen & Mylovanov, Tymofiy, 2009. "Stochastic mechanisms in settings without monetary transfers: The regular case," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(4), pages 1373-1395, July.
    6. Marianne Bertrand & Sendhil Mullainathan, 1999. "Is There a Discretion in Wage Setting? A Test Using Takeover Legislation," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 30(3), pages 535-554, Autumn.
    7. Mylovanov, Tymofiy, 2008. "Veto-based delegation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 138(1), pages 297-307, January.
    8. Melumad, Nd & Shibano, T, 1994. "The Securities-And-Exchange-Commission And The Financial-Accounting-Standards-Board - Regulation Through Veto-Based Delegation," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(1), pages 1-37.
    9. Martimort, David & Semenov, Aggey, 2006. "Continuity in mechanism design without transfers," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 93(2), pages 182-189, November.
    10. Manuel Amador & Kyle Bagwell, 2013. "The Theory of Optimal Delegation With an Application to Tariff Caps," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 81(4), pages 1541-1599, July.
    11. Manuel Amador & Iván Werning & George-Marios Angeletos, 2006. "Commitment vs. Flexibility," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(2), pages 365-396, March.
    12. Armstrong, Mark, 1995. "Delegation and discretion," MPRA Paper 17069, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Dezsö Szalay, 2005. "The Economics of Clear Advice and Extreme Options," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 72(4), pages 1173-1198.
    14. Nahum D. Melumad & Toshiyuki Shibano, 1991. "Communication in Settings with No. Transfers," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 22(2), pages 173-198, Summer.
    15. Manuel Amador & Kyle Bagwell, 2012. "Tariff Revenue and Tariff Caps," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(3), pages 459-465, May.
    16. Gilligan, Thomas W & Krehbiel, Keith, 1987. "Collective Decisionmaking and Standing Committees: An Informational Rationale for Restrictive Amendment Procedures," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 3(2), pages 287-335, Fall.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alex Frankel, 2021. "Selecting Applicants," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 89(2), pages 615-645, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Amador, Manuel & Bagwell, Kyle, 2020. "Money burning in the theory of delegation," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 382-412.
    2. Ball, Ian & Gao, Xin, 2024. "Benefiting from bias: Delegating to encourage information acquisition," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 217(C).
    3. Krähmer, Daniel & Kováč, Eugen, 2016. "Optimal sequential delegation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 849-888.
    4. Auster, Sarah & Pavoni, Nicola, 2024. "Optimal delegation and information transmission under limited awareness," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 19(1), January.
    5. Ricardo Alonso & Niko Matouschek, 2008. "Optimal Delegation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 75(1), pages 259-293.
    6. Vincent Anesi & Daniel J. Seidmann, 2009. "Optimal Delegation with a Finite Number of States," Discussion Papers 2009-20, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    7. Anton Kolotilin & Andriy Zapechelnyuk, 2018. "Persuasion Meets Delegation," Discussion Papers 2018-06, School of Economics, The University of New South Wales.
    8. Aggey Semenov, 2018. "Delegation to a possibly ignorant agent," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 51(1), pages 64-93, February.
    9. Semenov, Aggey, 2012. "Delegation to potentially uninformed agent," MPRA Paper 42080, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Kolotilin, Anton & Li, Hongyi, 2021. "Relational communication," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 16(4), November.
    11. Liang, Pinghan, 2013. "Optimal delegation via a strategic intermediary," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 15-30.
    12. Ambrus, Attila & Egorov, Georgy, 2017. "Delegation and nonmonetary incentives," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 101-135.
    13. Gan, Tan & Hu, Ju & Weng, Xi, 2023. "Optimal contingent delegation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 208(C).
    14. Manuel Amador & Kyle Bagwell & Alex Frankel, 2018. "A note on interval delegation," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 6(2), pages 239-249, October.
    15. Arve, Malin & Honryo, Takakazu, 2022. "Wasteful procedures?," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 122(C).
    16. Anton Kolotilin & Andriy Zapechelnyuk, 2018. "Persuasion Meets Delegation," Discussion Papers 2018-06, School of Economics, The University of New South Wales.
    17. Sarah Auster & Nicola Pavoni, 2020. "Limited Awareness and Financial Intermediation," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 043, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    18. Martimort, David & Semenov, Aggey, 2008. "The informational effects of competition and collusion in legislative politics," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(7), pages 1541-1563, July.
    19. Navin Kartik & Andreas Kleiner & Richard Van Weelden, 2021. "Delegation in Veto Bargaining," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(12), pages 4046-4087, December.
    20. Mark Armstrong & John Vickers, 2010. "A Model of Delegated Project Choice," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 78(1), pages 213-244, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Optimal delegation; Sequential screening; Dynamic mechanism design; Non-transferable utility;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D02 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Institutions: Design, Formation, Operations, and Impact
    • D20 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - General
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D86 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Economics of Contract Law

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedbqu:rpa18-1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Spozio (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbbous.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.