We present an economic analysis of the American Mafia's organizational design elements that promote its survival. Over nearly one hundred years, Mafia crime syndicates adapted their task assignments, performance measures, rewards and punishments, and culture to constantly shifting external...

Empower your students to solve today’s important business problems with the basic tools of economics and without overwhelming calculus. Ideal for MBA courses, Brickley focus on data-driven decision-making and managerial applications within the structure of an organization. Using...

Economics challenge the specification of discretionary accrual models. Because rent-seeking firms pursue differentiated business strategies, firms in the same industry experience idiosyncratic shocks due to heterogeneous economic fundamentals and hence have different accrual generating...

I explore the evolving role of accounting information in allocating capital. Accounting arose to control conflicts of interest in organizations (stewardship role). The industrial revolution spawned capital-intensive firms and public capital markets with dispersed shareholders to finance these...

Despite acknowledgement in the literature that low quality earnings (i.e., those that are subsequently restated) arise not only from managerial malfeasance but also underlying differences in firm fundamentals, many studies focus on the former and relegate the latter to the generic rubric of...

Economists have long recognized that government regulations often generate unintended consequences.1 The initial Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 exempted small firms from certain filing requirements. The SEC expanded these exemptions in implementing the Sarbanes...