Open AccessExperimentation in organizations
Author(s) -
Moroni Sofia
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
theoretical economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 4.404
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1555-7561
pISSN - 1933-6837
DOI - 10.3982/te3069
Subject(s) - principal (computer security) , economic rent , moral hazard , incentive , task (project management) , microeconomics , work (physics) , economics , business , actuarial science , computer science , computer security , management , engineering , mechanical engineering
We consider a moral hazard problem in which a principal provides incentives to a team of agents to work on a risky project. The project consists of two milestones of unknown feasibility. While working unsuccessfully, the agents' private beliefs regarding the feasibility of the project decline. This learning requires the principal to provide rents to prevent the agents from procrastinating and free‐riding on others' discoveries. To reduce these rents, the principal stops the project inefficiently early and gives identical agents asymmetric experimentation assignments. The principal prefers to reward agents with better future contract terms or task assignments rather than monetary bonuses.