Econ Papers Daily / 期刊论文
共同代理中的信息联盟
Information alliance in common agency
摘要
We study an agency model with two independent projects each of which is owned by a principal. Under exclusive agency, each principal uses a different agent, whereas under common agency, all principals use the same agent. A project’s outcome depends on the agent’s hidden effort. We show that, even in the absence of physical linkages between the projects, a principal benefits from providing information on her project outcome to the other principal under common agency (rather than benefiting from receiving the information ), whereas no such benefits arise under exclusive agency. That is, under common agency, an information sharing principal can take advantage of the other principal’s using the shared information. As a result, sharing information becomes each principal’s dominant strategy, provided that the other principal uses the shared information in a Pareto-optimal way. We show that using a common agent is optimal when information can be shared.
中文摘要
我们研究了一个包含两个独立项目的委托代理模型，每个项目由一位委托人所有。在独家代理模式下，每位委托人雇佣不同的代理人；而在共同代理模式下，所有委托人雇佣同一代理人。项目的产出取决于代理人的隐性努力。研究表明，即使项目之间不存在物理关联，在共同代理模式下，委托人通过向另一位委托人提供自身项目结果的信息（而非接收信息）能够获益，而这种收益在独家代理模式下并不存在。也就是说，在共同代理模式下，共享信息的委托人可以利用另一位委托人对共享信息的使用。因此，只要另一位委托人以帕累托最优方式使用共享信息，信息共享将成为每位委托人的占优策略。我们证明，当信息可以共享时，使用共同代理人是最优选择。