Lecture Title: Designing Interim Deadlines for Time-Inconsistent Agents

Speaker: Dr. Gao Buqu, School of Economics and Trade, Hunan University

Time: 14:00 (2:00 PM), March 27, 2025 (Thursday)

Venue: Room 119, School of Economics and Management

Abstract:

In many real-life situations, people need to complete a divisible task over a fixed time horizon. There are two prominent features in task management. First, people are subject to productivity shocks, which requires flexibility in intertemporal workload allocation. Second, people are prone to procrastination and demand commitment devices. In a principal-agent setting, we study the optimal design of interim deadlines that trade off the demand for flexibility and commitment. We show that the profit-maximizing contract may entail fewer interim deadlines for the time-inconsistent agent than for the time-consistent agent. Moreover, relative to the welfare-maximizing contract, the profit-maximizing contract may give more autonomy to the agent.

Speaker's Academic Profile:

Dr. Gao Buqu is an Associate Professor at the School of Economics and Trade, Hunan University. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Boston University, specializing in industrial organization, behavioral economics, and applied microeconomic theory, with a focus on contract design in markets and organizations. His research has been published in top-tier journals such as Management Science.