The When and How of Delegated Search
研究了企业外包搜索（如招聘、房地产或技术）时的最优合同设计，发现合同应包含按时间付费和发现可接受选项的奖金，且奖金在签约时确定并随时间递减；外包与否取决于企业对速度与质量的权衡。
Contract Design for Outsourcing Search Firms commonly outsource search for new employees, real estate, or technology to external agents. What should the contracts with these agents look like, and under which conditions should companies even hire agents (as opposed to doing the search in house)? These are the questions studied in “The when and how of delegated search” by Zorc et al. The authors find that the optimal contracts pay the agent a per-time fee as well as a bonus for finding an acceptable alternative. The size of this bonus is defined on signing of the contract and decreases over time. The decision of whether to outsource at all hinges on the firm’s trade-off between speed and quality; in-house search becomes optimal for a firm that prioritizes quality, but outsourcing offers better speed.