How does the formation of cross-country teams affect the organization of work and the structure of wages? To study this question, we propose a theory of the assignment of heterogeneous agents into hierarchical teams, where less skilled agents specialize in production and more skilled agents...

This paper examines the market entry of the UK’s largest retailer (Tesco) into the USA. Tesco’s launch of a new brand – Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Markets – in virgin territory is a bold move, notwithstanding the firm’s considerable success with its overseas investment strategy (which...

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was noted that retailers in Britain had started providing increased variety and fashionability to their customers, had added mid-season purchasing to their previous two-season calendars, and that a high fashion and low price ‘throwaway market’ had...

Written prior to the financial crisis of the world’s third largest retailer following its announcement of accounting irregularities on February 24 2003, this paper uses a case study of Ahold’s struggles to manage significant investment in the unpredictable business environments of Latin...

In the context of a market characterized by the enduring legacy of socialism through governmental ownership of retail businesses, the continued presence of domestic retailers, and increasing levels of competition, this article examines the organizational challenges faced by, and the strategic...

We present evidence from a firm level experiment in which we engineered an exogenous change in managerial compensation from fixed wages to performance pay based on the average productivity of lower-tier workers. Theory suggests that managerial incentives affect both the mean and dispersion of...

This paper examines the role of hierarchies in the organization of human‐capital‐intensive production. We develop an equilibrium model of hierarchical organization and provide empirical evidence based on confidential data on thousands of law offices. The equilibrium assignment of individuals...

This article illustrates how contracts are completed ex post in practice and, in so doing, indirectly suggests what the real function of contracts may be. Our evidence comes from the contracts between automobile manufacturers and their dealers in 23 dealership networks in Spain. Franchising...

We document the establishment and evolution of a cooperative norm among workers using evidence from a natural field experiment on a leading UK farm. Workers are paid according to a relative incentive scheme under which increasing individual effort raises a worker's own pay but imposes a negative...

The distribution of property rights has a strong impact on output when, due to the non-contractibility of some inputs, market contracts do not yield efficient outcomes. In this Paper I analyse how the distribution of land rights affects the choice of both contractible techniques – such as crop...