Since Black (1976), the source of the stock price volatility smirk has remained a controversy. The volatility smirk is a side effect of agency conflict. An important distinction is that the smirk occurs in the optimum, even after agency conflict has been resolved. The slope of the smirk is found...

In many workplaces co-workers have the best information about each other's effort. Managers may attempt to exploit this information through peer evaluation. I study peer evaluation in a pure moral hazard model of production by two limitedly liable agents. Agents receive a signal about their...

This discussion paper led to an article in <I>Applied Economics</I> (2012). Vol. 44(32), pages 4211-4219.<P> We examine how self-selection of workers into firms depends on the power of the firms' incentive schemes and how it affects the performance of firms that increase the power of the incentive...</p></i>

Comparative payment schemes and tournament-style promotion mechanisms are ubiquitous in the work place. We test experimentally whether they have a negative impact on the willingness to cooperate. Participants first perform in a simple task and then participate in a public goods game. The payment...

This discussion paper resulted in a publication in the 'Journal of Economics and Management Strategy', forthcoming.<P> Distorted performance measures in compensation contracts elicit suboptimal behavioral responses that may even prove to be dysfunctional (gaming). This paper applies the empirical...</p>

Reimbursement of commuting costs by employers has attracted little attention from economists. We develop a theoretical model of a monopsonistic employer who determines an optimal recruitment policy in a spatial labour market with search frictions and show that partial reimbursement of commuting...

This paper analyzes empirically the relationship between pay and performance. Economic and psychological theories predict that the design and implementation of a performance measurement and compensation system affect the motivation of employees. Our survey results demonstrate a positive...

Theoretical analyses of (optimal) performance measures are typically performed within the realm of the linear agency model. This model implies that, for a given compensation scheme, the agent’s optimal effort is unrelated to the amount of noise in the performance measure. In contrast,...

This paper studies wage structure characteristics and their incentive effects within one firm. Based on personnel records and an employee survey, we provide evidence that wages are attached to jobs and that promotions play a dominant role as a wage determinant. We furthermore show that a...

Reimbursement of commuting costs by employers has attracted little attention from economists. We develop a theoretical model of a monopsonistic employer who determines an optimal recruitment policy in a spatial labour market with search frictions and show that partial reimbursement of commuting...