We discuss how the use of field experiments sheds light on long standing research questions relating to firm behavior. We present insights from two classes of experiments: within and across firms, and draw common lessons from both sets. Field experiments within firms generally aim to shed light...

We explore the consequence for taxation and regulation of bonus pay when investors are protected by taxpayers from downside risk. The paper develops a model where workers in financial sector firms make decisions about effort and risktaking which are influenced by the structure of bonus pay....

Sales are a widespread and well-known phenomenon that has been documented in several product markets. Regularities in such periodic price reductions appear to suggest that the phenomenon cannot be entirely attributed to random variations in supply, demand, or the aggregate price level. Certain...

The paper examines a Lagrange Multiplier type test for the constancy of the parameter in general models with dependent data without imposing any artificial choice of the possible location of the break. In order to prove the asymptotic behaviour of the test, we extend a strong approximation...

In an environment in which heterogenous buyers and sellers undertake ex-ante investments, the presence of market competition for matches provides incentives for investment but may leave inefficiencies that take the form of hold-up and coordination problems. This paper shows, using an explicitly...

The paper discusses community enforcement in infinitely repeated two-action games with local monitoring. Each player interacts with and observes only a fixed set of partners, of whom he is privately informed. The main result shows that for generic beliefs efficiency can be sustained in a...

Discusses Japan's political immobilism caused by lack of strong ministerial leadership and failure of reform initiatives. Attributes it to the power of factions within political parties which reforms have failed to break and the dominance of the bureaucracy. Paper surveys the two decades since...

In semiparametric binary response models, support conditions on the regressors are required to guarantee point identification of the parameter of interest. For example,one regressor is usually assumed to have continuous support conditional on the other regressors. In some instances, such...

The importance of pre-colonial history on contemporary African development has become an important .eld of study within development economics in recent years. In particular Gennaioli and Rainer (2007) suggest that pre-colonial political centralization has had an impact on con- temporary levels...

There is a great deal of interest in the causes and consequences of conflict in Africa, one of the poorest areas of the world where only modest economic progress has been made. This paper asks whether post-colonial conflict is, at least in part, a legacy of historical conflict by examining the...