We offer a model that combines a knowledge based organizational structure with progressive learning of employees’ talent. We show that higher span of control is associated with better selected managers, higher wages, higher probability to be promoted, and higher turn-over in the early career...

We show that a team may favor self-sabotage to influence the principal’s contract decision. Sabotage increases a team member’s bonus and total team effort. If these benefits outweigh the reduction in the success probability, sabotaging the team is rational.

In an agency model with moral hazard and limited liability, we show that the provision of perks can be inefficient, even if perks are contractible. Interestingly, there can be over- as well as underinvestment in perks. We also demonstrate that perks may actually harm the agent, although perks...

We study efficiency and distributional implications of bilateral delegation in wage and employment bargaining in monopoly. Delegation causes underproduction, and the bargaining pie severely contracts rendering mutual gains from delegation impossible. With an increase in the union’s bargaining...

This paper shows that large labour unions reduce the incentive for uncoordinated monetary policies to improve the terms of trade. This finding implies that concentrated labour markets significantly affect the optimal policy prescription in an open economy.

Consider an environment such as a political election where a principal requires the completion of multiple tasks, but an agent can only be rewarded with a hire/fire decision rather than an endogenously chosen monetary payment. When the principal hires a single agent to perform multiple tasks,...

This paper analyzes the impact of wage comparisons among inequity-averse agents on optimal incentive intensities in a linear–exponential–normal moral hazard model with multi-tasking. We consider individual and team production tasks that differ in that only individual production causes wage...

In Uttar Pradesh, teams of four are engaged to dig soil under the NREGA programme. In one treatment spouses work together; in the other treatment they work in separate teams. Working with spouses is associated with significantly higher output.

When an employee in a gift exchange game earns significantly less than the employer, the source of employer income does not affect effort choices. However, to induce one unit of effort, the employer has to pay higher wages than in a game without payoff inequality.

I study the trade-off between private and verifiable interim performance evaluations under uncertainty. More uncertainty leads to higher agency costs if the interim evaluation is public and verifiable but lower agency costs if the interim evaluation is private and unverifiable.