THE “SALES AGENT” PROBLEM: EFFORT/LEISURE ALLOCATION UNDER PERFORMANCE PAY AS BEHAVIOR TOWARDS RISK

C-Tier
Journal: Economic Inquiry
Year: 2019
Volume: 57
Issue: 4
Pages: 1997-2016

Score contribution per author:

0.335 = (α=2.01 / 3 authors) × 0.5x C-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

The choice between safe and risky assets represents behavior towards risk: more risk‐averse investors buy more safe assets. We develop and test a general model that applies this intuition to the time allocation between risky effort and risk‐free leisure under linear incentives. When risk increases with effort, risk‐averse agents choose less effort, but when risk is independent of effort, effort choice is unaffected by risk preferences. In many incentive contracts, income risk is multiplicative with, rather than additive to effort, sales commissions being one example. In such cases, lower effort by the risk‐averse is a hitherto undocumented behavior towards risk (JEL C91, M52, J33)

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:bla:ecinqu:v:57:y:2019:i:4:p:1997-2016
Journal Field
General
Author Count
3
Added to Database
2026-01-25