团队

We consider a stylized incentive management problem over an infinite time horizon, where the principal hires an agent to provide services to customers. Customers request service in one of two ways: either via an online or a traditional offline channel. The principal does not observe the offline customers’ arrivals, nor does she observe whether the agent exerts (costly) effort that can increase the arrival rate of customers. This creates an opportunity for the agent (i) to divert cash (that is, to under-report the number of offline customers and pocket respective revenues) and also (ii) to shirk (that is, not to exert effort), thus leading to a novel and thus far unexplored double moral hazard problem. To address this problem, we formulate a constrained, continuous-time, stochastic optimal control problem and derive an optimal contract with a simple intuitive structure that includes a payment scheme and a potential termination time of the agent. We enrich the model to allow the principal to either (i) dynamically adjust the prices for the services in both channels or (ii) monitor the agent. Both tools help the principal to alleviate the double moral hazard problem. We derive respective optimal strategies for using those tools that guarantee the highest profits. We show that the worse the agent’s past performance is, the lower the prices should be set and the more the principal should monitor the agent.

在当前竞争激烈的商业环境中，创新合作已成为企业在竞争中取得优势的重要路径。在创新驱动的合作伙伴关系中，大型企业往往通过与小型科技公司合作，将后者的核心技术整合进自身产品，以推动产品创新、扩大市场份额。为了争取合作机会，小型企业也需要向潜在合作方展示技术整合的应用潜力和市场前景。

涵盖电子游戏、社交媒体和视频共享平台的数字媒体行业，去年收入估计打破5600亿美元。当全球多达数千万人沉迷电子游戏，多国政府和组织都积极采取措施遏制趋势。我们的研究显示，动态定价可望解决游戏成瘾的问题。