Promises in contract design

doi:10.1016/j.euroecorev.2013.07.012

CORC > 上海财经大学 > 上海财经大学

	Promises in contract design
	Charness, Gary 1; Du, Ninghua 2,3; Yang, Chun-Lei 4; Yao, Lan 2,3
刊名	EUROPEAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
	2013-11
卷号	64 页码:194-208
关键词	Promise Contract design Gift exchange Experiment
ISSN号	0014-2921
DOI	10.1016/j.euroecorev.2013.07.012
英文摘要	In this paper, we propose a new channel of contract design to boost efficiency. If deviating from one's own words induces a self-imposed moral burden, the optimal contracting procedure with regard to cheap talk shall assign the responsibility for installing the nonbinding promise in the contract to whoever has the residual right to break such promise, in the spirit of Grossman and Hart (1986) and Hart and Moore (1990). To study whether a worker's own promise of effort level governs his real choice of effort in a gift exchange game, we implement four treatments in our experiments by varying two factors: (1) who (the firm or the worker) takes the position of the proposer to propose the contract and (2) whether the proposed contract includes a nonbinding specification of the worker's effort level. Our key finding is that when it is the worker who proposes the contract and the contract includes the worker's promised effort level, both the worker's actual effort choice and the aggregate profits are significantly higher than in each of the other three treatments (and there is little difference in worker effort otherwise). (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
WOS研究方向	Business & Economics
语种	英语
出版者	ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV
WOS记录号	WOS:000328919500012
内容类型	期刊论文
源URL	[http://10.2.47.112/handle/2XS4QKH4/1905]
专题	上海财经大学
通讯作者	Charness, Gary
作者单位	1.Univ Calif Santa Barbara, Dept Econ, Santa Barbara, CA 93106 USA; 2.Shanghai Univ Finance & Econ, Sch Econ, Shanghai 200433, Peoples R China; 3.Shanghai Univ Finance & Econ, Minist Educ, Key Lab Math Econ, Shanghai 200433, Peoples R China; 4.Acad Sinica, Res Ctr Humanity & Social Sci, Taipei 115, Taiwan
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Charness, Gary,Du, Ninghua,Yang, Chun-Lei,et al. Promises in contract design[J]. EUROPEAN ECONOMIC REVIEW,2013,64:194-208.
APA	Charness, Gary,Du, Ninghua,Yang, Chun-Lei,&Yao, Lan.(2013).Promises in contract design.EUROPEAN ECONOMIC REVIEW,64,194-208.
MLA	Charness, Gary,et al."Promises in contract design".EUROPEAN ECONOMIC REVIEW 64(2013):194-208.