Date
2011
Description
Paru dans les Cahiers de la Chaire Santé, n°6, juin 2010
Indexation documentaire
Microéconomie
Subject
regulation; power of incentive schemes; altruism; public organization; countervailing incentives
Code JEL
L3; D8; D2
Nom de la revue
Journal of Public Economic Theory
Volume
13
Numéro
3
Date de publication
2011
Pages article
391-416
Nom de l'éditeur
Wiley
Auteur
Naegelen, Florence
Mougeot, Michel
Type
Article accepté pour publication ou publié
Résumé en anglais
Public service motivation is often considered as an argument for low-
powered incentive schemes in the public sector. In this paper, we characterize the optimal contract between a public regulator and an altruistic agent
according to the degree of public service motivation, when the type of the
public service consumer is privately observed. We show that the requested
effort is non decreasing with and can be higher than the first best level.
Moreover we show that the agent is put on a high powered contract when
some customers are served but that this contract is associated with different types of consumers according to : In contrast, the agent is never put
on a cost-plus contract. Finally, we show that the first best allocation can
be achieved under budget balance for a degree of altruism higher than a
threshold that we characterize.