亲爱的经济学家，
在不得不给学生写推荐信时，我那上了年纪的大学导师常常怨声连连——写这些信占用了他大量时间，而他却得不到任何酬劳。他认为，既然他是在为我未来的雇主提供服务，那么他们就应该给他酬劳。然而这就意味着，他有动机给我写一封糟糕的推荐信，因为那样一来，我就得不到那份工作，然后会求他再给我写一封，于是他就可以再拿到一份酬劳。当然，我们可以假定，只有在我得到工作的情况下，他才能拿到酬劳——但如果是这样，他就会在推荐信中把我吹的天花乱坠。有没有什么办法能激励我的导师写封公正而准确的推荐信，同时又对他所耗费的时间做出补偿呢？
菲尔(Phil C)，英国艾尔斯伯里
亲爱的菲尔，
我不像你那么担心你的导师会忍不住想拼了老命多写几封推荐信。如果他想靠群发吹捧邮件赚钱，他早在公关领域混份差事了。
但这里面有个深层次的问题：你的导师掌握了一些关于你的有用信息，可他并没有什么特别的理由需如实向他人转述。我不敢肯定该给你什么建议。经济学家们把这个问题称为“机制设计”，尽管近期的若干诺贝尔奖和一些了不起的数学定理都涉及这个问题，但迄今我看不出有什么办法能让我完美地解决这个问题。
不过，有一个办法是，让你导师的利益与你未来雇主的利益相一致。或许可以付给你导师一笔佣金：只要你还干着那份工作，你的导师就可领到你工资的0.1%。如果他推荐了几百名成功的应聘者，他领到的佣金总额就会一步步增多。假如他在推荐信中大肆吹捧、把你推荐到你不胜任的工作岗位上，你就不可能干得长久，他也会因此错失未来数年甚至数十年的佣金。
我不知道这办法是否管用，不过，它有一项有益的副作用。它会鼓励你的导师教你些有用的东西：他会从你的收益中分到一杯羹。
译者/汪洋
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001034827
Dear Economist,
My old university tutor often complains when he has to write references – they take up a lot of his time, and he doesn’t get paid for them. Since he’s doing my prospective employer a service, he thinks they should pay him. However, that means he’s motivated to write me a bad reference, because then I won’t get the job, and I’ll ask him to write me another one – so he gets paid again. Of course, we could say that he only gets paid if I get the job – so he writes me an overly gushing reference. How can we motivate my tutor to write a fair and accurate reference, and compensate him for his time?
Phil C, Aylesbury
Dear Phil,
I am not as concerned as you that your tutor will be tempted into hustling for extra reference-writing work. If he wanted to be paid for mass-mailing hyperbole, he’d have taken a job in public relations.
But there is a deep problem here: your tutor has useful information about you and no particular reason to tell the truth. I am not sure what to suggest. Economists call the problem “mechanism design” and despite a number of recent Nobel prizes and some formidable mathematical theorems, I’ve seen nothing to suggest that I can solve the problem perfectly.
However, one approach is to ally your tutor’s interests with those of your prospective employer. Perhaps he could be awarded a commission: 0.1 per cent of your salary, for as long as you have the job. A couple of hundred successful candidates placed and the sums involved start to build up. If he over-eggs the reference and places you in the wrong job, you won’t last long and he’ll miss out on years or decades of future commission.
I don’t know if this would work, but it has a nice side-effect. It encourages your tutor to teach you something useful: he’ll be getting a cut of the proceeds.
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