The pervasive quot;tournamentquot; style of organization is beneficial in that it allows shareholders to place the most talented managers in senior positions. We demonstrate that this benefit is achieved only at a cost: competition for promotions to prestigious positions induces excessive...

We study a situation in which a manager, whose ability to select good projects is unknown a priori, proposes a project for funding. The manager's superior can observe the information about project quality generated by the manager, but cannot observe the resources devoted by the manager to...

We extend the quot;implicit incentivesquot; literature by analyzing how career concerns impact a risk-neutral manager's decision of how much to learn about a project before investing in it. The manager has unknown ability that determines the probability with which a good project is available, so...

Over 80% of all commercial bank lending to corporations in the U.S. is done via bank loan commitments. Yet we have little empirical knowledge of loan commitment contracts. In this paper we describe the rich contractual structure of bank loan commitments based on data pertaining to over 2,500...

This paper examines the determinants of organizational scale and scope, with applications to various industries, including financial services. We build a model in which new opportunities arise for firms, but the skills needed to exploit them effectively are unknown. Early investments in these...

In organizations, ideas are often delegated for evaluation as a means of efficiently aggregating multiple information signals. However, those who delegate often find it impossible to separate the evaluation of the ideas they delegate from the evaluation of abilities of those delegated the task...