Efficient Contracting in a Market for Life Insurance Agents with Asymmetric Information
研究了寿险公司与代理人之间的激励冲突，发现当代理人努力在开拓新客户上更有效时，高首年佣金和低续期佣金是有效契约安排，这与行业现状一致。
The incentive conflict between the life insurance firm and its agents is examined. Conditions for first-best contracting in a symmetrically informed environment entail a fixed wage payment by the firm. In contrast, when the firm is constrained by both the uncertainty of consumer demand and the allocation of effort by the agent, a high commission rate for new policies sold and a low commission rate for policies renewed is an efficient contractual arrangement between the firm and its agents, if and only if an agent's effort is more productive when directed at increasing the expected flow of revenue from new rather than renewal customers. The prediction of the model is consistent with the contractual arrangements currently observed in the life insurance industry, where customers are locked-in by a renewal premium lower than the premium for a new customer who otherwise has the same characteristics. A positive theory of the insurance firm based on the economic theory of agency was developed by Mayers and Smith (1981) who suggest that different contractual arrangements among owners, managers, agents, and policyholders arise as efficient outcomes when there are costs to controlling incentive conflicts among them. One component in the structure of the life insurance firm yet to be investigated rigorously is the incentive conflict between the life insurer and its sales representatives. I Of particular interest in this article is the solution reached between conflicting parties over the allocation of effort to alternative search tasks and the commission rates embodied in the incentive compensation agreement or commission contract offered to agents by