Wealth and the Principal-Agent Matching

FEUNL Working Paper Series No. 628

31 Pages Posted: 30 Aug 2018 Last revised: 22 Apr 2022

See all articles by Paulo Fagandini

Paulo Fagandini

Nova School of Business and Economics; ISCAL - Lisbon Accounting and Business School

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

Fagandini, Paulo and Fagandini, Paulo, Wealth and the Principal-Agent Matching (November 1, 2017). FEUNL Working Paper Series No. 628, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3236666 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3236666

Paulo Fagandini (Contact Author)

ISCAL - Lisbon Accounting and Business School ( email )

Avenida Miguel Bombarda 20
Lisbon, Lisbon 1069-035
Portugal
217984500 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://iscal.ipl.pt

Nova School of Business and Economics ( email )

Campus de Carcavelos
Rua da Holanda 1
Carcavelos, Lisbon 2775-405
Portugal
+351910612954 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://www.novasbe.pt

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