Delegation with Endogenous States

We present a model of delegation with moral hazard. A principal delegates a decision to an agent, who affects the distribution of the state of the world by exerting costly and unobservable effort. The principal faces a trade-off between (i) granting the agent discretion, so he can adapt the decision to the state and (ii) limiting the agent’s discretion, to induce him to exert effort. Our model is flexible on how effort affects the state distribution, thus capturing several distinct economic environments. Optimal delegation takes one of four simple forms, all commonly used in practice: floors, ceilings, floor-ceilings or gaps.