不对称信息下信息技术服务外包合同设计

本文针对客户企业向IT供应商外包信息技术服务这一背景，考虑IT供应商不仅具有开发信息系统能力的私有信息，且其开发过程中的努力行为对于客户企业不可见的情况，研究了客户企业信息技术服务外包合同设计问题。研究发现，不对称信息下，客户企业可以通过设计最优合同菜单来甄别不同能力的IT供应商，但是此时客户企业需要向高能力IT供应商支付信息租金。同时，客户企业可以通过设计最优合同有效规制高能力IT供应商系统开发过程中的努力行为，但是相比于信息对称的情况，不对称信息下低能力IT供应商会存在努力不足的现象。低能力IT供应商努力不足的现象会降低社会福利和客户企业的期望利润；客户企业向高能力IT供应商支付信息租金的行为也会减少客户企业的期望利润。增加系统调试阶段的调试时间或者选择信息系统故障检出率高的IT供应商，可以降低高能力IT供应商的信息租金，并缓解低能力IT供应商努力不足的现象，进而减少信息不对称给客户企业带来的利润损失。

Contract Design for IT Outsourcing under Asymmetric Information

The clients have increasingly outsourced their IT services from an IT vendor over the last two decades. The IT vendor is considered who has not only private information about its system development capability but also unobservable development effort to the client, and how the client designs the IT outsourcing contract according to a stylized model is investigated. By comparing the cases of symmetric and asymmetric information, our analysis shows that under asymmetric information case, the client can screen the IT vendors who have different system development capability according to the optimal contract menu. Meanwhile, the client has to pay information rent to the IT vendor who has high capability. On the other hand, the client can regulate the development effort of the high capable IT vendor by the optimal contract. In contrast, the low capable IT vendor exerts less development effort under asymmetric information case than that under symmetric information case, which is referred to as under-effort. The under-effort of low capable IT vendor decreases the social welfare and the client’s expected profit. The information rent obtained by the high capable IT vendor reduces the client’s expected profit as well. By increasing the testing time or selecting the high bug-detection rate of IT vendor, the client can decrease the information rent obtained by the high capable IT vendor and mitigate the under-effort of the low capable IT vendor, which reduces the profit loss of the client due to asymmetric information. Data from the IT outsourcing contract between British Columbia, Canada Ministry of Health and IBM are used to verify our results, which provides insights on how to reduce the profit loss for the client in real-world IT outsourcing.