The Tenuous Trade‐off between Risk and Incentives
指出，现有实证研究未能发现风险与激励之间的负向权衡，反而显示不确定性越高激励越强。作者认为这是因为文献忽略了不确定性通过责任分配对激励的影响：在确定环境下企业监控投入，在不确定环境下则授权并基于产出付薪。
Empirical work testing for a negative trade-off between risk and incentives has not had much success: the data suggest a positive relationship between measures of uncertainty and incentives rather than the posited negative trade-off. I argue that the existing literature fails to account for an important effect of uncertainty on incentives through the allocation of responsibility to employees. When workers operate in certain settings, firms are content to assign tasks to workers and monitor their inputs. By contrast, when the situation is more uncertain, they delegate responsibility to workers but, to constrain their discretion, base compensation on observed output.