This paper develops a theory of the allocation of authority between two parties that produce impure public goods. We show that the optimal allocation depends on technological factors, the parties’ valuations of the goods produced, and the degree of impurity of these goods. When the degree of...

Using firm-level data from nine developing countries we demonstrate that (a) certain institutions like restrictive labour market regulations that are considered to be bad for economic growth might be beneficial for production efficiency, whereas (b) good business environment which is considered...

From an employer's perspective a tournament should induce agents to exert productive activities but refrain from destructive ones. We experimentally test the predictive power of a tournament model which suggests that - within a reasonable framework - productive and destructive activities are not...

We explore the optimal delegation of decision rights by a principal to a better informed but biased agent. In an infinitely repeated game a long lived principal faces a series of short lived agents. Every period they play a cheap talk game ala Crawford and Sobel (1982) with constant bias,...

This paper offers a rationale for limiting the delegation of (real) authority, which neither relies on insurance arguments nor depends on ownership structure. We analyse a repeated hidden action model in which the actions of a risk neutral agent determine his future outside option. Consequently,...

Teamwork and cooperation between workers can be of substantial value to a firm, yet the level of worker cooperation often varies between individual firms. We show that these differences can be the result of labor market competition if workers have heterogeneous preferences and preferences are...

We develop a theory of a firm in an environment with incomplete contracts. The firm’s headquarter decides on the complexity, the organization, and the global scale of its production process. Specifically, it decides: i) on the mass of symmetric intermediate inputs that are part of the value...

Tournament incentive schemes offer payments dependent on relative performance and thereby are intended to motivate agents to exert productive effort. Unfortunately, however, an agent may also be tempted to destroy the production of his competitors in order to improve the own relative position....

Recent studies indicate that firms often outsource standard and simple tasks, while keeping complex and important inputs inside their boundaries. This observation is difficult to reconcile with the property rights approach of the firm, which suggests that important components should be...

Internal organization relies heavily on psychological consistency requirements. This thought has been emphasized in modern compensation theory, but has not been extended to organization theory. The perspective sheds new light on several topics in the theory of the firm, like the boundaries of...