給野心員工的最適契約

Optimal Contract for Ambitious Team Workers

我們考慮在一個公司團隊當中，員工不只在乎他的絕對所得，也在乎與其他成員比較之下的相對所得。若員工越在意相對所得，我們就說他越有野心。當員工有要勝過團隊中其他成員的野心時，公司實際上可以利用員工這種心理，以較低的工資成本，激勵員工投入相同程度的努力。我們證明此時員工的最適契約符合相對績效評估的性質。更重要的是，即使員工之間的生產技術是獨立的，當員工有野心時，最適契約仍然應該採用相對績效評估。這個結果不同於傳統模型中認為在這種情況下，應該採用絕對績效評估的見解。另一個與文獻不同的結果是，當員工間有不同程度的野心時，相對於同質員工的狀況，公司有較低的利潤。

This paper investigates the optimal compensation scheme for workers in a team who value not only absolute but also relative incomes. A worker is said to be more ambitious if his utility places more weight on relative income. In this case, the firm can exploit the worker’s preference for relative comparison to design a compensation scheme which induces the same effort level with lower cost. Under the optimal compensation scheme, the workers’ wages are shown to depend on relative performance, and exhibit wage compression. More importantly, even if the production technology calls for absolute performance evaluation in the traditional principal-agent model, the optimal wage structure still relies on relative performance. Finally, in contrast to past literature, worker heterogeneity is shown to reduce the firm’s profit.