This paper provides a new explanation for the dominance of the low-powered incentive contract over the high-powered incentive contract using a hybrid model of moral hazard and adverse selection. We first show that unobservable risk aversion or cost leads to lowpowered incentives. We then consider the case where both risk aversion and cost of the agent are unobservable to the principal. This mul...

We analyze task reallocation where individually rational (IR) agents (re)contract tasks among themselves based on marginal costs. A task allocation graph is introduced as a tool for analyzing contract types. Traditional single task contracts always have a short path (sequence of contracts) to the optimal task allocation but an IR path may not exist, or it may not be short. We analyze an algorit...

We analyze task reallocation where individually rational ([R) agents (re)contract tasks among themselves based on marginal costs. A task allocation graph is introduced as a tool for analyzing contract types. Traditional single task contracts always have a short path (sequence of contracts) to the optimal task allocation but an IR path may not exist, or it may not be short. We analyze an algorit...

It has been proposed that switch costs in task switching reflect the strengthening of task-related associations and that strengthening is triggered by response execution. The present study tested the hypothesis that only task-related responses are able to trigger strengthening. Effects of task strengthening caused by error corrections were considered. Recent findings suggest that errors lead to...

this paper examines the theoretical rationales and practical aspects of task-based language teaching (tblt) with particular reference to research findings in efl/esl contexts. the definitional scope of the term ‘task’, polarizations in terms of task vs. non-task, and its relation to different language teaching approaches have engendered conceptual and methodological ambiguities.  moreover, fact...

A credible theory of intelligence must provide a satisfactory account of the wide spectrum of learning abilities displayed by humans and some other animals. One of the most impressive of these is skill acquisition—the ability to create new skills, refine them through practice, and apply them in new task contexts. This ability to retain and refine solutions to important subproblems and then empl...