Commitment versus Flexibility with Costly Verification
研究了委托人面对信息优势但偏好更高行动的代理人时，如何通过成本高昂的验证来设计最优授权规则，发现验证成本较低时阈值加退出条款最优，成本较高时可能需对中间行动进行验证。
A principal faces an agent who is better informed but biased toward higher actions. She can verify the agent’s information and specify his permissible actions. We show that if the verification cost is small enough, a threshold with an escape clause (TEC) is optimal: the agent either chooses an action below a threshold or requests verification and the efficient action above the threshold. For higher costs, however, the principal may require verification only for intermediate actions, dividing the delegation set. TEC is always optimal if the principal cannot commit to inefficient allocations following the verification decision and result.