Principal-Agent Theory and Representative Government

摘要

In recent decades, economists have devoted great efforts to the analysis of the principal-agent problem (see, for example, Milgrom and Roberts 1992). This area of study has to do with the incentives and disincentives of an agent acting on behalf of a principal that he is presumed or contracted to represent. No brief summary can do justice to the great variety of issues and problems considered in this literature, except possibly this: a perfect agent is, for various reasons, pretty much impossible, and in many cases a great gap exists between what the agent does and what the principal wanted him to do but could neither compel nor induce him to do with any feasible agency contract.