Wealth and the Principal-Agent Matching
FEUNL Working Paper Series No. 628
31 Pages Posted: 30 Aug 2018 Last revised: 22 Apr 2022
Date Written: November 1, 2017
Abstract
I study the role the agent's wealth plays in the principal-agent matching with moral hazard and limited liability. I consider wealth and talent as the agent's type, and size as the firm's (principal's) type. Because utility is not perfectly transferable in this setup, I use generalized increasing differences and find that wealthier agents match with bigger firms, when talent is homogeneous among them, whereas for equally wealthy agents, more talented agents will match with bigger firms. I describe economic conditions over types such that pairs of higher types will write contracts in which the agent obtains more than the information rents, through a higher bonus, increasing the expected surplus. Finally, I provide an example in which wealth is distributed among agents in such a way that it reverses the standard result of positive assortative matching between talent and firm size.
Keywords: Moral Hazard, Asymmetric Information, Matching, Non Transferable Utility
JEL Classification: D86, D82, C78, J33, M12
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation