Andrea Buffa
Institution
University of Colorado Boulder
PhD Year
2012
buffa@colorado.edu
FTG Membership
Member
Website
https://www.andreabuffa.com
Featured Work
Nov 3, 2025
Privacy and Team Incentives
Real-world contracts are typically private, observed only by their direct signatories, so agents working together are vulnerable to the principal opportunistically reducing other agents’ incentives. The principal can mitigate this commitment problem by giving the most skilled agent a budget and delegating authority to write other agents’ contracts. This endogenous hierarchy, never optimal with public contracts, raises effort, output, and compensation but allows rent extraction....
