Incentive effects of funding contracts: an experiment
通过实验室实验，研究了不同融资合同（债务与股权）对创业努力和资源配置效率的激励影响，发现经验积累后行为接近理论预测。
Abstract We examine the incentive effects of funding contracts on entrepreneurial effort and on allocative efficiency. We experiment with funding contracts that differ in the structure of investor repayment and, thus, in their incentives for the provision of entrepreneurial effort. Theoretically the replacement of a standard debt contract by a repayment-equivalent non-monotonic contract reduces effort distortions and increases efficiency. Likewise, distortions can be mitigated by replacing outside equity by a repayment-equivalent standard-debt contract. We test both hypotheses in the laboratory. Our results reveal that the incentive effects of funding contracts must be experienced before they are reflected in observed behavior. With sufficient experience, observed behavior is either consistent with or close to theoretical predictions and supports both hypotheses. If we allow for entrepreneur-sided manipulations of project outcomes, we find that non-monotonic contracts lose much of their appeal.