Decision-making authority is often bundled with accountability. Decision makers are usually made accountable for failure. We propose an incomplete-contract approach to investigate four accountability systems: personal accountability, no accountability, collective accountability, and reverse accountability. We consider an organization defined by three assignments: income, authority, and accountability. These assignments are endogenously and jointly determined in equilibrium. Our main findings are: (1) authority and accountability are usually, but not always, bundled in equilibrium; (2) personal accountability and collective accountability are equally efficient, and no accountability and reverse accountability are equally efficient; (3) no accountability can be optimal if the authority is quite capable; (4) control tends to be assigned to managers whose personal benefit from and the marginal cost of control are relatively small; and (5) reverse accountability is generally inferior to personal accountability, but it can be optimal if the authority is quite capable and her marginal cost and personal benefit from control are sufficiently small.

中文翻译：

---

组织中权力和责任的捆绑

决策权常常与责任捆绑在一起。决策者通常要对失败负责。我们提出了一种不完全契约的方法来调查四种问责制度：个人问责、不问责、集体问责和反向问责。我们考虑一个由三项任务定义的组织：收入、权力和责任。这些分配是在均衡状态下内生且共同决定的。我们的主要发现是：（1）权力和责任通常（但并非总是）处于平衡状态；(2) 个人责任和集体责任同样有效，没有问责制和反向问责制同样有效；(3) 如果当局有足够的能力，任何问责都不是最佳的；(4) 控制权往往被分配给那些个人从控制权中获得的收益和边际成本较小的管理者；(5)反向问责通常不如个人问责，但如果当局有相当的能力并且她的边际成本和控制带来的个人利益足够小，那么它可以是最优的。