Turnovsky (1995) derives in a continuous-time model of a decentralized economy that the correct specification of the firm's objective function is to maximize the initial value of its outstanding securities. The firm value is the discounted flow of real earnings. For the discrete-time version of...

This paper examines the link between a firm’s ownership of productive assets and its choice of foreign-market entry strategy. We find that, controlling for industry- and country-specific characteristics, the most productive firms (i.e., those owning the most assets) will enter through...

The transition into non-traditional export activities attracts important policy and academic attention. Using international trade data, we explore how alternative linkages relate to the take-off and acceleration of export industries. Concretely, we run a horse-race among alternative Marshallian...

A standard result in contests is that a higher-ability player has a higher probability of winning the prize than a lower-ability player. Put differently, a stronger player has an advantage over a weaker player in a contest. There are very few exceptions to this standard result. I consider a...

Gender differences in overconfidence have been extensively documented in the empirical literature, but the implications for labor market outcomes are not well understood. In this paper, we analyze how men's relatively higher overconfidence, combined with competitive job incentives, affects...

We examine wage competition in a model where identical workers choose the number of jobs to apply for and identical firms simultaneously post a wage. The Nash equilibrium of this game exhibits the following properties: (i) an equilibrium where workers apply for just one job exhibits unemployment...

The German Income Tax Reform 2000, which announced a reduction in income tax rates to be implemented in a series of three stages, was welcomed by the public as a step towards unleashing lurking growth potentials. Nonetheless, in the course of the year 2001 a dispute arose, centering around the...

In our model, an agent produces an outcome by a costly effort and then distributes it among heterogeneous users. The agents̕ payoff is the weighted sum of the users ̕shares and the coefficient reflecting their heterogeneity. When the agent neglects users ̕heterogeneity the game leads to an...