In the sharecropping context, the Agent’s contribution is simply the harvest. In the CEO context, one definition of the
Agent’s contribution is the change in the wealth of the shareholders through appreciation in the firm’s stock price. For workers buried inside an organization, it is sometimes very difficult to define and measure a contribution to firm value. Later in this note we will discuss alternative objective performance measures (which sometimes raise “get what you pay for” issues); in later notes we will discuss subjective performance measures.