Gaming and strategic opacity in incentive provision

We study the benefits and costs of “opacity” (deliberate lack of transparency) of incentive schemes as a strategy to combat gaming by better informed agents. In a two‐task moral hazard model in which only the agent knows which task is less costly, the agent has an incentive to focus his effort on th...

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Main Authors: Ederer, F, Holden, R, Meyer, M
Format: Journal article
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2018
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author Ederer, F
Holden, R
Meyer, M
author_facet Ederer, F
Holden, R
Meyer, M
author_sort Ederer, F
collection OXFORD
description We study the benefits and costs of “opacity” (deliberate lack of transparency) of incentive schemes as a strategy to combat gaming by better informed agents. In a two‐task moral hazard model in which only the agent knows which task is less costly, the agent has an incentive to focus his effort on the less costly task. Opaque schemes, which make a risk‐averse agent uncertain about which task will be more highly rewarded, mitigate such gaming but impose more risk. We identify environments in which opaque schemes not only dominate transparent ones, but also eliminate the costs of the agent's hidden information.
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spelling oxford-uuid:5eb99369-e879-49ae-b44f-b3b0a9caf1272022-03-26T17:42:26ZGaming and strategic opacity in incentive provisionJournal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:5eb99369-e879-49ae-b44f-b3b0a9caf127EnglishSymplectic Elements at OxfordWiley2018Ederer, FHolden, RMeyer, MWe study the benefits and costs of “opacity” (deliberate lack of transparency) of incentive schemes as a strategy to combat gaming by better informed agents. In a two‐task moral hazard model in which only the agent knows which task is less costly, the agent has an incentive to focus his effort on the less costly task. Opaque schemes, which make a risk‐averse agent uncertain about which task will be more highly rewarded, mitigate such gaming but impose more risk. We identify environments in which opaque schemes not only dominate transparent ones, but also eliminate the costs of the agent's hidden information.
spellingShingle Ederer, F
Holden, R
Meyer, M
Gaming and strategic opacity in incentive provision
title Gaming and strategic opacity in incentive provision
title_full Gaming and strategic opacity in incentive provision
title_fullStr Gaming and strategic opacity in incentive provision
title_full_unstemmed Gaming and strategic opacity in incentive provision
title_short Gaming and strategic opacity in incentive provision
title_sort gaming and strategic opacity in incentive provision
work_keys_str_mv AT edererf gamingandstrategicopacityinincentiveprovision
AT holdenr gamingandstrategicopacityinincentiveprovision
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