Optimal Contract for Machine Repair and Maintenance
研究了在动态环境中，企业如何设计支付和终止条款来激励维修公司投入足够资源，以解决委托代理问题，并给出了结构简单、易于实施的最优合同。
Maintenance outsourcing is quite common in industries that rely on complex and critical equipment. Instead of investing in the maintenance facilities, firms outsource maintenance activities to specialized companies. However, it may be hard for firms (i.e., principal) to observe whether maintenance companies (i.e., agent) put sufficient resources into providing the best service, which gives rise to agency issues. In a dynamic environment in which an agent is responsible for both maintenance and repair of a critical machine, how the principal uses payments and termination to tackle agency issues is a challenging problem. In “Optimal Contract for Machine Repair and Maintenance,” F. Tian, P. Sun, and I. Duenyas provide theoretical guidance on designing the optimal contract to induce efforts from an agent to efficiently operate a machine. Although they consider the very general contract forms, the optimal contracts demonstrate simple and intuitive structures, making them easy to describe and implement in practice.