I'll Tell You Tomorrow: Committing to Future Commitments

This paper studies a principal who commits to inform an agent about what the principal will eventually do. The principal wishes to promote the agent if and only if the state is good, and he gradually receives private information about the state. The agent always wishes to be promoted, but faces a decreasing outside option and would rather leave if she expects not to be promoted. The principal optimally induces the agent to stay by committing to commit, that is, by committing today to tell the agent tomorrow about her chances of promotion the day after. When the agent has a high initial outside option, with some probability, the principal promotes the agent regardless of his information---even if he realizes early that the state will turn out to be bad. The principal may ask the agent to stay until he fully observes the state, only to deny her promotion; this does not necessarily mean that the principal leads the agent on. We apply our results to worker retention, relationship-specific investment, and forward guidance.