We study how career concerns affect the dynamics of incentives in a multi-period contract, when the agent’s productivity is a stochastic function of his past productivity and investment. We show that incentives are stronger and performance is higher when the contract approaches its expiry...

We study how firm characteristics evolve from early business plan, to initial public offering, to public company for 49 venture capital financed companies. The average time elapsed is almost six years. We describe the financial performance, business idea, point(s) of differentiation, non-human...

This Paper presents a new approach to the theory of the firm by identifying factor complementarities as central to the determination of the firm’s boundaries. The factor complementarities may take a variety of forms: technological and informational complementarities, as well as economies of...

We analyze optimal contracts and optimal matching patterns in a simple model of partnership where there is a double-sided moral hazard problem and potential partners differ in their productivity in two tasks. It is possible for one individual to accomplish both tasks (sole production) and there...

The inheritance of contemporary financial economics invites us to consider financial stability as integral to a liberal market setting. The crisis however demonstrated that financial markets may prove highly dysfunctional in the absence of adequate mechanisms of regulation and governance. This...

We study the design of a sequence of two contests between a pair of identical risk averse employees whose effort choices are private information. It is optimal for the organization to `bias' the second contest in favor of the early winner - the reduction in second-period incentives is outweighed...

We survey an emerging literature at the intersection of organizational economics and international trade. We argue that a proper modelling of the organizational aspects of production provides valuable insights on the aggregate workings of the world economy. In reviewing the literature, we...

In technology-based industries, incumbent firms often license their technology to other firms that will potentially compete with them. Such a strategy is difficult to explain within traditional models of licensing. This paper extends the literature on licensing by relaxing the assumption of a...