Essays on reference-dependent preferences

Abstract

This dissertation consists of two chapters exploring the economic implications of reference-dependent preferences over incentive design and belief formation.The first chapter studies the intertemporal allocation of incentives in a repeated moral hazard model. Beside consumption utility, reference-dependent agents experience utility from changes in their expectations about present and future income caused by the performance measure realization. In contrast to the prediction with classical preferences but consistent with real-world contracts, this paper shows that if consumption utility is not too concave and if changes in expectations about present income carries sufficiently larger weight in utility than changes in expectations about future income, the optimal contract defers all present incentives into future payments by setting a present fixed wage. Despite this prediction, I further prove that several standard features of the contract with classical preferences---no rents to the agent, conditions to achieve first-best cost and non-optimality of random contracts---still hold.The second chapter studies the temporal path of subjective beliefs when a reference-dependent agent who experiences standard anticipatory utility and utility from changes in these anticipatory feelings waits T periods for a binary outcome realization. Following the optimal beliefs literature, in each period the agent chooses a belief about her likelihood of success to maximize her intertemporal utility. Consistent with the empirical evidence, the model predicts that optimism decreases as the pay-off date approaches if the outcome is important enough or if the agent is sufficiently loss averse. Intuitively, when the pay-off date is distant disappointment is less salient than the joy of hoping favorable outcomes; as the realization date gets closer, however, the threat of disappointment becomes important. Applying the model to the optimal timing of productivity bonuses, I find these should be granted as frequently as possible because optimism acts as a non-pecuniary motivator that allows the principal to induce the desired effort path at a cheaper expected cost.

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