We characterize efficient technical languages and study their interaction with the scope and structure of organizations. Efficient languages use precise words for frequent events and vague words for unusual ones. A broader organizational scope allows for more synergies to be captured, but...

We provide evidence on the match between firms, managers and incentives using a new survey designed for this purpose. The survey contains information on a sample of executives’ risk preferences and human capital, on the explicit and implicit incentives they face and on the firms they work for....

Electoral campaign finance is an important, and much debated, phenomenon in democracies throughout the world. This article discusses a possible economic model of campaign finance, which could be used for policy evaluation. At the core of the model lies an asymmetry of information between lobbies...

This Paper shows that trade can occur in a market where all traders are rational and none of them is subject to exogenous shocks. We develop a model of delegated portfolio management that captures key features of the US mutual fund industry and we embed it into an asset-pricing set-up. Fund...

A code is a technical language that members of an organization learn in order to communicate among themselves and with members of other organizations. What are the features of an optimal code and how does it interact with the characteristics of the organization? This Paper develops a simple...

It has long been recognized that the media play an essential role in government accountability. Even in the absence of censorship, however, the government may influence news content by maintaining a "cozy" relationship with the media. This paper develops a model of democratic politics in which...