This paper examines whether plantwide incentives for quality actually have incentive effects, a puzzle because high level incentives are common but potentially vulnerable to freeriding and other obstacles. We exploit a natural experiment embedded in a common but economically peculiar feature of...

This paper explores intermediary agency problems, specifically the use and misuse of authority and incentives in organizational hierarchies. Through a principal-supervisor-agent model inspired by sales settings, I propose organizations delegate authority over salespeople to frontline sales...

Shared bonus pools, in which a worker’s bonus depends both on a worker’s share of the pool (which serves as the incentive) and on the size of the pool (which is largely outside of the worker’s control), are a common method for distributing bonus pay. Using variation in the size of the...

Shared bonus pools, in which a worker’s bonus depends both on a worker’s share of the pool (which serves as the incentive) and on the size of the pool (which is largely outside of the worker’s control), are a common method for distributing bonus pay. Using variation in the size of the...