Relational incentives and moral hazard in teams

This paper studies moral hazard in teams using a model where efforts are promoted via the combination of profit shares and relational contracts. The focus is on how these two forms of incentives interact. According to the degree of effort observability and the importance of future interaction, the optimal allocation of profit shares can range from a wide dispersion across players to a full concentration of shares in the hands of a single player. When shares are sufficiently concentrated, the corresponding residual claimant can also adopt the role of administering all relational contracts, therefore serving as an endogenously chosen principal.