Optimal Incentive Contracts in the Presence of Career Concerns
Author | : Robert Gibbons |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 70 |
Release | : 1991 |
ISBN-10 | : IND:30000113931152 |
ISBN-13 | : |
Rating | : 4/5 (52 Downloads) |
Download or read book Optimal Incentive Contracts in the Presence of Career Concerns written by Robert Gibbons and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper studies career concerns -- concerns about the effects of current performance on future compensation -- and describes how optimal incentive contracts are affected when career concerns are taken into account. Career concerns arise frequently: they occur whenever the market uses a worker's current output to update its belief about the worker's ability and competition then forces future wages (or wage contracts) to reflect these updated beliefs. Career concerns are stronger when a worker is further from retirement, because a longer prospective career increases the return to changing the market's belief. In the presence of career concerns, the optimal compensation contract optimizes total incentives -- the combination of the implicit incentives from career concerns and the explicit incentives from the compensation contract. Thus, the explicit incentives from the optimal compensation contract should be strongest when a worker is close to retirement. We find empirical support for this prediction in the relation between chief-executive compensation and stock-market performance.