It has been shown by Polinsky and Shavell that the strict liability rule is socially superior to the negligence liability rule when firms are injurers, strangers are victims, and accidents have a unilateral nature if prefect competition among firms prevails. This article considers the problem of...

In most firms, if not all, workers are divided asymmetrically in terms of authority and responsibility. In this paper, we view the asymmetric allocations of authority and responsibility as essential features of hierarchy and examine why hierarchies often prevail in organizations from that...

This paper formulates a duopoly model in which firms care about relative profits as well as their own profits. Our purpose is to investigate the relationship between the weight of relative performance and R&D expenditure. We find a non-monotone relationship between the weight of relative...

We provide a simple model to investigate decisions about vertical separation. The key feature of this model is that more than one input is required for the final product of the downstream monopolist. We show that as the bargaining powers of independent complementary input suppliers grow larger,...

This paper explores the roles of internal and external habit formation in a simple model of endogenous growth with overlapping generations. Unlike the representative agent settings in which the distinction between internal and external habits may not yield significant qualitative differences in...

This paper reports experiments that elicit subjects' initial responses to 16 dominancesolvable two-person guessing games. The structure is publicly announced except for varying payoff parameters, to which subjects are given free access, game by game, through an interface that records their...

In this paper, I summarize Albert Ando's seminal and ingenious work on the saving behavior of the elderly in Japan and then present some pertinent data and evidence that became available only after Ando did his work in this area. I conclude that the retired elderly in Japan dissave, in...

Unless free international lending/borrowing is allowed, domestic saving equals domestic investment and hence saving and investment taxes have the identical effect, as is the case in a closed-economy context. However, if it is allowed, households can accumulate foreign assets besides domestic...

This paper proposes an implicit control mechanism of managers inside the firm. We argue that the need to motivate workers may make it beneficial for a self-interested, short-sighted manager to pursue long-run viability of the firm. When the firm is in a stable environment, this implicit control...

Corruption is a function of its return relative to engaging in productive activities. This paper presents an approach for thinking about the institutional features of societies and the resulting amount of corruption. The empirical results suggest that political competition is more important than...