Date: 2017
Type: Working Paper
Subjective performance evaluation of employees with biased beliefs
Working Paper, EUI ECO, 2017/08
FOSCHI, Matteo, SANTOS-PINTO, Luís Pedro, Subjective performance evaluation of employees with biased beliefs, EUI ECO, 2017/08 - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/48485
Retrieved from Cadmus, EUI Research Repository
This paper analyses how worker optimism (and pessimism) affects subjective performance evaluation (SPE) contracts. We let an optimistic (pessimistic) worker overestimate (underestimate) the probability of observing an acceptable performance. The firm is better informed about performance than the worker and knows the worker's bias. We show that optimism (and pessimism): i) changes the optimal incentive scheme under SPE, ii) lowers the deadweight loss associated with SPE contracts, iii) can lead to a Pareto improvement by simultaneously lowering the firm's expected wage cost and raising the worker's expected compensation. In addition, we show that worker pessimism can lead to SPE contracts without a deadweight loss, in contrast to the standard case in the literature.
Cadmus permanent link: https://hdl.handle.net/1814/48485
ISSN: 1725-6704
Series/Number: EUI ECO; 2017/08
Keyword(s): Optimism Overconfidence Contract Moral hazard Biased beliefs D82 D84 D86 J41 J7