I think mazes are related to the sorts of extreme principal-agent problems that are common in real life but AFAIK understudied by economics. Suppose I [1] invest my retirement savings with a financial company [2] who invests it with an American business [3] that contracts its manufacturing to a Chinese company [4] and sells to American retailers [5] who sell to American consumers [6]. That’s six numbered agents, most of which are complex entities with their own internal principal-agent problems. There are countless interactions of that level of complexity in the real economy.
I agree, you cannot just run this through the standard IO P-A analysis and expect much. That why I suggested the intersection of the three literature areas would be the more interesting place—however I suspect there is not a lot of work there (as yet)
But I didn’t really see much in this sequence that really seem to engage any in an obvious way—or missed it.
I think your sequences of P-A relationships will likely show that the collection has more error than any one of the individual stages but I don’t think that is what the problem the moral maze here is getting at. In the scenario you offer where is the force driving people to sacrifice all other values away in their life at the corporate alter of career advancement? I think the levels have to be internal to the organization—though that might be an interesting extension (thought probably ends up something of a rehash of Marx)
I think mazes are related to the sorts of extreme principal-agent problems that are common in real life but AFAIK understudied by economics. Suppose I [1] invest my retirement savings with a financial company [2] who invests it with an American business [3] that contracts its manufacturing to a Chinese company [4] and sells to American retailers [5] who sell to American consumers [6]. That’s six numbered agents, most of which are complex entities with their own internal principal-agent problems. There are countless interactions of that level of complexity in the real economy.
I agree, you cannot just run this through the standard IO P-A analysis and expect much. That why I suggested the intersection of the three literature areas would be the more interesting place—however I suspect there is not a lot of work there (as yet)
But I didn’t really see much in this sequence that really seem to engage any in an obvious way—or missed it.
I think your sequences of P-A relationships will likely show that the collection has more error than any one of the individual stages but I don’t think that is what the problem the moral maze here is getting at. In the scenario you offer where is the force driving people to sacrifice all other values away in their life at the corporate alter of career advancement? I think the levels have to be internal to the organization—though that might be an interesting extension (thought probably ends up something of a rehash of Marx)