This paper documents important differences in payment for order flow (PFOF), spreads, and price improvement across asset classes. In stocks, we show that PFOF is small. While many retail trades are executed off-exchange, we find that they receive meaningful price improvement, particularly when...

The paper documents important differences in payment for order flow (PFOF), spreads, and price improvement across asset classes. In stocks, we show that PFOF is small. While many retail trades are executed off-exchange, we find that they receive meaningful price improvement, particularly when...

This paper is concerned with three types of incentive programs. First, individual wage incentives that cause a worker's efforts to have a major effect on his pay. Second, group incentives in which the pay of an individual is determined by the output of a group of workers-a group can be as small...

This paper examined the bonus and wage behavior in Korea. We found that both bonuses and wages in Korea respond to economic conditions much more than their counterparts in Japan. This finding may reflect the fact that the Korean labor market is much closer to a spot market rather than a...

How do firms protect their human capital? We test whether firms facing an increased threat of being acquired strengthen their antitakeover provisions (ATPs) in order to bond with their employees. We use the adoption of the Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine (IDD) by US state courts, which...

In 2005, the perception that wealthy executives were being rewarded for failure led Congress to ban Chapter 11 firms from paying retention bonuses to senior managers. Under the new law, debtors could still pay bonuses to executives – but only “incentive” bonuses triggered by accomplishing...

Mit der Implementierung des Bestellerprinzips - wer den Makler beauftragt, muss ihn auch bezahlen - hat der Gesetzgeber einen Wechsel der Zahllast für die Courtage vom Mieter zum Vermieter vorgenommen. Mit Hilfe eines sequentiellen Verhandlungsspiels wird hier diskutiert, inwieweit der Wechsel...

Economists have for a long time argued that performance-based bonuses raise performance. Indeed, many firms use bonuses tied to individual performance to motivate their employees. However, there has been heated debate among human resources professionals recently, and some firms have moved away...

We augment a simple inventory model with new features of the post-crisis regulations to offer new predictions on the effects of post-crisis regulations on the over-the-counter markets. First, the increased capital requirements of Basel III lead to an overall increase in order rejection rates of...

Firms rarely cut compensation, so little is known about the after-effects when compensation reductions do occur. We use commission reductions at a sales firm to estimate how work effort and turnover change. In response to an 18% decline in sales commissions, corresponding to a 7% decline in...

This paper studies the consequences of fixed commissions and low entry barriers in Greater Boston's real estate brokerage industry from 1998-2007, a period with substantial agent turnover. We find that entry is not associated with increased sales probabilities or reduced sales time. Instead, it...

Firms rarely cut compensation, so little is known about the after-effects when compensation reductions do occur. We use commission reductions at a sales firm to estimate how work effort and turnover change. In response to an 18% decline in sales commissions, corresponding to a 7% decline in...

We analyze competition among firms within a regulated industry, where intermediaries' commissions are paid by customers and set exogenously. Firms set their prices taking into account the impact of commissions over the intermediaries' advice and consumers' choices. In this setting, the effect of...

We explore the dispersion of bonus payments of managers within and between five large firms from the German chemical sector. We use data from a yearly salary survey in these firms during the observation period 2008 to 2013. Bonus payments account for 20 percent of base salaries on average. Both...

Go-shop provisions in merger agreements significantly alter the selling process by allowing active solicitation of new bids after a merger agreement is signed with a particular bidder. Using a large sample of merger agreements from 2003 to 2012, we examine whether go-shops are used to benefit...

Mit der Implementierung des Bestellerprinzips - wer den Makler beauftragt, mußs ihn auch bezahlen - hat der Gesetzgeber einen Wechsel der Zahllast für die Courtage vom Mieter zum Vermieter vorgenommen. Ob die intendierte Entlastung der Mieter gelingt, hängt maßgeblich vom Grad der...

Under contingent fees the attorney gets a share of the judgment; under conditional fees the lawyer gets an upscale premium if the case is won which is, however, unrelated to the adjudicated amount. We compare conditional and contingent fees in a principal-agent framework where the lawyer chooses...

I show that if dealers are averse to holding inventory, then prices, liquidity, and dealers' inventory positions depend on inventory costs in negotiated over-the-counter markets. The solution to my dynamic equilibrium model rationalizes the following stylized facts in the US corporate bond...

We find that Australian mutual fund fees are generally negatively related to their risk-adjusted performance in periods of low economic activity and negatively related to their unconditional alpha where the unconditional alpha is reflective of periods of both high and low economic activity. Our...

There is a vigorous debate on the liberalization of heavily regulated agricultural markets in India. A crucial institutional characteristic is the role of state regulated brokers in wholesale markets. Relying on data from a unique survey in Uttarakhand, a state in North-India, we find that...

This paper estimates the cost of using simple percentage fees rather than the broker optimal Bayesian mechanism, using data for real estate transactions in Boston in the mid-1990s. This counterfactual analysis shows that interme- diaries using the best percentage fee mechanisms with fees ranging...