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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Goal Setting In The Principal-Agent Model: Weak Incentives For Strong Performance, Brice Corgnet, Joaquín Gómez-Miñambres, Roberto Hernán-González
Goal Setting In The Principal-Agent Model: Weak Incentives For Strong Performance, Brice Corgnet, Joaquín Gómez-Miñambres, Roberto Hernán-González
ESI Publications
We study a principal–agent framework in which principals can assign wage-irrelevant goals to agents. We find evidence that, when given the possibility to set wage-irrelevant goals, principals select incentive contracts for which pay is less responsive to agents' performance. Agents' performance is higher in the presence of goal setting despite weaker incentives. We develop a principal–agent model with reference-dependent utility that illustrates how labor contracts combining weak monetary incentives and wage-irrelevant goals can be optimal. The pervasive use of non-monetary incentives in the workplace may help account for previous empirical findings suggesting that firms rely on unexpectedly weak monetary incentives.