Prehire Screening and Subjective Performance Evaluations
研究招聘前筛选如何影响基于主观绩效评估的合同设计，发现完美筛选虽能匹配能力但削弱了主观绩效激励，因此不筛选或部分筛选可能更优，且部分筛选时会出现晕轮效应。
We study a two-stage model in which the agent’s ability is initially unknown to any party, but the principal can choose a prehire screening scheme to discover the agent’s ability before offering a contract. Perfect screening enables the principal to fine-tune the contract to the agent’s ability, but it also prevents her from enforcing a contract that is contingent on subjective interim performance measures. Given that interim performance measures are critical for motivating first-stage effort, the principal may benefit from adopting no screening or partial screening. When partial screening is employed, the halo effect—a commonly observed bias in subjective evaluation practices—emerges in the equilibrium. This paper was accepted by Shivaram Rajgopal, accounting.