期刊名称：Discussion Papers / School of Business, University of New South Wales
出版年度：2007
卷号：2007
出版社：Sydney
摘要：This paper investigates the use of reputation in an economy where principals
hire agents for two different kinds of tasks, in which the agents have differing
aptitudes. Principal-agent matches are remade every period, but a principal
can acquire some information on the past behavior of her current agent.
This allows consideration of two different reputation mechanisms—one in
which an agent’s past record of defections makes no reference to the kind
of task, and another in which information about past defections is available
separately for each task. The two kinds of reputation can be interpreted as
“personal honor” and performance record (e.g. credit history) respectively.
I first characterise the equilibria under the two mechanisms. I then
assume that the economy is in equilibrium under one mechanism when the
other becomes available. I find that it may be incentive-compatible for
individual agents to use the new mechanism, thus dislodging the existing
equilibrium, even when the change ultimately turns out to be efficiencyreducing.
