# Principal agent problem

`kaal:entity:principal-agent-problem`

**Status.** derived

This node is assembled mechanically from the 3 claims that carry the concept tag `principal-agent-problem`. It is a roster of what the corpus says under this term. It is **not** an adjudicated definition: no single statement here has been ruled canonical, and no first-appearance call has been made. Read the claims and judge for yourself.

## Every claim under this term

3 claims across 2 works, 2020 to 2021.

**2020**

- [3652481-004](https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/3652481-004) [mechanism/argued] -- A DAO realigns the otherwise disparate interests of principals and agents because all participants in the DAO share the same goal, which reduces behavior contrary to the interests of the organization.
  > Incentives are realigned between otherwise disparate interests of principals and agents because all participants in a DAO share the same goal, which reduces behavior that is contrary to the interests of the organization.
  Wulf A. Kaal, Decentralized Autonomous Organizations – Internal Governance and External Legal Design (2020). SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3652481

**2021**

- [3782193-030](https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/3782193-030) [empirical/evidenced] -- The strong trust that sustained Maghribi trade, in which embezzlement was rare despite extreme information asymmetry, cannot be explained by a strong centralized government, since the Maghribis could not form a centralized legal or political hierarchy and the official legal channels were slow and unreliable.
  > In point of fact, the records show that such embezzlement was rare. Instead, a strong sense of trust pervaded. So what mechanism protected the principals from their agents' asymmetric information? The answer was not a strong centralized gov- ernment.
  Craig Calcaterra, Wulf A. Kaal, Historical Sketches of Centralization vs. Decentralization (2021). SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3782193
- [3782193-031](https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/3782193-031) [failure/argued] *(failure mode)* -- Honesty would be the wrong strategy for an agent if the contract were anonymous and its resolution did not affect future contracts, because that situation is a single-stage zero-sum game in which stealing all the entrusted wealth is optimal.
  > Honesty would be a bad strategy for the agent if the contract was anonymous and the resolution didn't affect future contracts.
  Craig Calcaterra, Wulf A. Kaal, Historical Sketches of Centralization vs. Decentralization (2021). SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3782193

## Verify

Every claim above resolves to a record carrying a verbatim source quote, the sha256 of the source PDF, and a preformatted citation. Nothing here asks to be taken on trust.

    curl -s https://wulfkaal.github.io/entities/principal-agent-problem.md | sha256sum

**Canonical form.** This markdown file is the canonical hashed representation of this entity node. Its sha256 is the content hash.