Optimal Procurement Contracts with Pre-Project Planning
研究了在逆向选择和道德风险并存时，采购方如何设计包含前期调查的最优合同，发现合同会系统性地扭曲信息获取行为，并通过期权合同菜单实现激励与信息揭示的双重目标。
The paper studies procurement contracts with pre-project investigations in the presence of adverse selection and moral hazard. To model the procurer’s roblem, we extend a standard sequential screening model to endogenous information acquisition with moral hazard. The optimal contract displays systematic distortions in information acquisition. Due to a rent effect, adverse selection induces too much information acquisition to prevent cost overruns and too little information acquisition to prevent false project cancelations. Moral hazard mitigates the distortions related to cost overruns yet exacerbates those related to false negatives. The optimal mechanism is a menu of option contracts that achieves the dual goal of providing incentives for information acquisition and truthful information revelation.