Coarse performance evaluation for envious agents
研究了为何实践中常用粗粒度绩效评估，发现当代理人嫉妒心强时，粗评估效果不亚于细评估，为固定工资或虚高评级等做法提供了理论支持。
Abstract Information economics predicts that a principal will prefer a finer performance evaluation system to a coarser one. Nevertheless, coarse performance evaluation is often used in practice. To explain this seeming contradiction, I construct a model of a principal and envious agents. I show that a coarse evaluation system can do as well as a finer one if agents are sufficiently envious, that is, if they incur large utility loss when they are paid less than their peers. This result supports the use of coarse performance evaluation that aggregates signals of good performance, in the form of fixed wages or inflated ratings.