Most existing theories of the firms define a firm as a collection of physical assets, and hence can not explain the firm from a human-asset perspective, which is of particular importance for understanding human-capital intensive firms. To fill in the gap, this paper proposes an alternative...

The incomplete nature of contracts governing international transactions limits the extent to which the production process can be fragmented across borders. In a dynamic, general-equilibrium Ricardian model of North-South trade, the incompleteness of international contracts is shown to lead to...

The objective of this paper is to add evidence of job mobility within a firm using personnel records from a single large U.S. corporation, focusing on the determinants of the hazard rates of being promoted to a higher hierarchy level. How to successfully control for unobserved heterogeneity is...

This paper develops a theory of outside ownership where such an ownership arrangement mitigates an external finance problem. Part of the gains from outside ownership accrue to asset owners which determines the asset value. The theory provides a context to analyze asset ownership and asset values...

Two main results have been obtained on the literature on contractual solutions to the hold-up problem. First, a contract specifying a price and quantity of the final good to be traded will, fairly generally, induce efficient investments if these are `selfish' in nature, i.e., each party's...

This paper examines the relationship between input sector liberalization and product quality innovation and export orientation by a LDC firm given the complementarity between high input quality and high product quality. We show that input sector liberalization per se may not induce quality...

Within the independent private-values paradigm, we derive the data-generating process of the winning bid for the last unit sold at multi-unit, sequential, oral, ascending-price auctions when bidder valuations are draws from different distributions; i.e., in the presence of asymmetries. When the...

We provide a framework for inference in discrete games that involve multiple decision makers and use it to study airline market structure in the US. We make inferences on a "class of models" rather that looking for point identifying assumptions that pin down a unique model. Making inferences in...

In this paper we explore the implications of the possibility of “trade in trash†on optimal environmental policy and on the ramifications of a stronger or weaker environmental lobby across regions or nations. We have constructed a multiple stage game composed of a market stage and a...

In 1997, the FDA relaxed regulations on direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising for pharmaceutical products. This has led to a substantial increase in such expenditures which in turn raises some important public policy questions. For example, has this increase in DTC advertising affected the...