Intertemporal Incentive, Career Concern, and Promotion

Abstract

We analyze how a principal should set his promotion rule when the agents have career concerns and compete with each other to get promoted. When the principal uses promotion as an incentive scheme to increase the agents’ effort, the rule may or may not favor the agent with higher expected ability. However, when the principal uses promotion to pick the best agent, the rule always gives higher promotion probability to the agent with higher expected ability.


 


 


Keywords: promotion, career concern, incentive

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