DP5289 Optimal Delegation

Author(s):	Ricardo Alonso, Niko Matouschek
Publication Date:	October 2005
Keyword(s):	decision rights, delegation, mechanism design
JEL(s):	D82, L23
Programme Areas:	Industrial Organization
Link to this Page:	cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=5289

We analyse the optimal delegation of decision rights by a uninformed principal to an informed but biased agent. When the principal cannot use message-contingent transfers, she offers the agent a set of decisions from which he can choose his preferred one. We fully characterize the optimal delegation set for general distributions of the state space and preferences with arbitrary continuous state-dependent biases. We also provide necessary and sufficient conditions for particular delegation sets to be optimal. Finally, we show that the optimal delegation set takes the form of a single interval if the agent's preferences are sufficiently similar to the principal's.