Severance Pay in an Optimal Contract
在委托代理模型中引入外生失业风险，发现遣散费能降低激励成本；低续用价值的代理人失业时无遣散费，高续用价值的代理人则获得高遣散费，这解释了工资随工龄增长的现象。
We study the incentive role of severance compensation. In a canonical principal-agent model, we introduce exogenous job destruction risk and show that compensation following job destruction can reduce overall incentive costs. To mitigate the risk of inefficient endogenous termination, agents with low continuation value receive no severance and lose value at job destruction, while agents with high continuation value receive high severance and gain value at job destruction. Comparative statics offer a novel explanation for the positive wage-tenure profile observed in the data: Average tenure and compensation should both be higher in jobs less exposed to job destruction risk.