Information Asymmetry and CEO Effort Allocation Under A Multi-Task Setting

Under multi-task setting, agents can decide on effort intensity as well as on effort allocation across all relevant tasks. As agents allocate unobservable efforts over multi-tasks, the principal, unfortunately, observes only the results. Agents have chance to maximize their benefits using information asymmetry nested in the nature of multi-tasks setting. It, therefore, is very important to investigate how agents respond to information asymmetry when they allocate their efforts over their various tasks. We address this issue using unique and rich date set that we have manually collected from the Korean Government’ annual reports on its performance evaluation public enterprises. The results show that agents allocate greater efforts on performance measures used to evaluate their diverse tasks than on those used to evaluate only a single task. In addition, the results document that uneven effort allocation are much greater as information asymmetry between the principal and agents increases. Our findings imply that agents’ effort allocation is determined by the relative benefits they derive on the various tasks. In addition, it is inferred that agents opportunistically utilize information asymmetry imbedded in multi-task agency contract, when they allocate efforts.