When Is It Foolish to Reward for A While Benefiting from B?
研究在委托代理关系中，使用与利益一致的绩效测量是否比不一致的测量产生更大剩余，发现代理人的努力成本影响最优测量方式，且最优测量应偏向代理人容易完成的任务。
A performance measure may or may not reflect the relative importance of different tasks for the production of benefit: it can be aligned or unaligned. Here, I examine when using an aligned measure generates a larger surplus in a principal-agent relationship than using an unaligned but otherwise identical measure. I find that (i) the agent's effort costs matter for the optimal way of measuring performance, and (ii) the optimal measure is not aligned but tilted toward tasks that the agent finds easy. Failing to recognize these insights may lead to false predictions about the use of incentives. (c) 2008 by The University of Chicago.