Monitoring and competing principals: A double-edged sword
研究了当多个委托人竞争一个代理人时，监控技术如何影响委托人利润。发现监控在改善风险激励权衡的同时，也降低了竞争对手提供更优合同的门槛，最终利润变化取决于代理人风险容忍度的导数。
Do monitoring technologies increase a principal's profits if she has to compete with others for an agent? While monitoring improves the risk-incentive tradeoff, it also reduces the costs for a rivaling principal to offer a more attractive contract. We show in a two-action, two-outcome model that when the derivative of the agent's risk tolerance is smaller than one, equilibrium profits are lower when monitoring is available if there is some competition. When the derivative is larger than one, equilibrium profits are higher when monitoring is available. Conversely, the agent benefits from monitoring when the competition is intense but can be hurt when it is mild.