Monitoring Team Members: Information Waste and the Transparency Trap
研究了企业为何在团队中采用个人绩效奖金并导致信息浪费和透明度陷阱，发现信任问题可能反而让企业受益，揭示了信息租金与战略保险租金之间的新权衡。
In a model of moral hazard in teams, we demonstrate that firms' concerns about low trust among teammates can justify two common but otherwise puzzling patterns: information waste and transparency trap. We find firms predominantly employ individual performance bonuses, ignoring that relevant information about team output and competition for better contracts leads workers into a self-defeating race toward effort transparency. Notably, the firm may be indifferent to or benefit from trust concerns, challenging the idea that robustness concerns invariably harm the principal's payoffs. Our analysis highlights a novel trade-off between the classical information rents and strategic insurance rents emerging from trust concerns.