The paper investigates the effect of four differently framed payment contracts on the agent's effort provision and performance in a real effort experiment. The four incentive payments are framed as a base wage and bonuses (one immediately pays bonuses, the other only after an initial...

We provide a hidden-action principal-agent model where the agent has referencedependent preferences. The loss-averse agent considers the base wage as reference point, and bonuses and/or penalties as gains and losses, respectively. When choosing optimal payments, the principal strategically sets...

Despite an international consensus on the importance to limit State aid spending, large amounts of resources are still devoted to a wide variety of subsidies to firms. A sizable literature studies the relationship between general government spending and the proximity of elections, mostly...