【报告摘要】We study the classical risk-neutral principal–agent moral-hazard problem with limited liability and continuous actions. A central challenge in this problem is to provide a tractable characterization of incentive compatibility (IC), which entails an infinite number of deviation constraints. The standard first-order approach (FOA) reduces IC to a single first-order condition and requires regularity conditions to be valid. However, a substantial literature has documented that these regularity conditions fail in a variety of economically relevant settings. In this paper, we develop an alternative route to handle the IC constraint that bypasses the FOA. We reformulate the moral-hazard problem as a max-min program and analyze a relaxed minimax counterpart. The minimax problem admits an optimal quota-bonus (QB) contract and we establish the tightness of the relaxation, implying QB optimality in the original problem without assuming FOA validity. Our results provide new foundations for QB optimality under different and economically meaningful conditions.

【报告人简介】柯荣住，浙江大学求是特聘教授，浙江大学“文科领军人才”特聘教授，博士生导师，浙江省特聘专家，入选国家高层次人才青年项目。浙江大学经济学学士、硕士，麻省理工学院经济学博士。研究领域为微观经济学、契约理论。目前已在Journal of Labor Economics、Operations Research、Theoretical Economics、Management Science、SlAM Journal on Optimization、Economic Theory、Social Forces等国际权威经济管理与社会科学专业杂志上发表论文。主持国家自然科学基金重点课题、香港政府研究局课题、浙江省哲学社会科学重大规划课题等多项课题。