This paper explores how motivating an incumbent CEO to make investments that improve the effectiveness of the firm organization under his management interacts with the replacement policy of the board of directors. We characterize the optimal compensation package (including severance pay) under...

This paper provides empirical evidence consistent with the facts that (1) social networks may strongly affect board composition and (2) social networks may be detrimental to corporate governance. Our empirical investigation relies on a unique dataset on executives and outside directors of...

Expansion in mobile phone coverage has improved access to information throughout the developing world, particularly within sub-Saharan Africa. The existing evidence suggests that information technology has improved market efficiency and reduced consumer prices for certain commodities. There are...

Guided by theories of management by exception, we study the impact of Information and Communication Technology on worker and plant manager autonomy and span of control. The theory suggests that information technology is a decentralizing force, whereas communication technology is a centralizing...

This Paper studies a model where Information Technology, while typically increasing overall inequality, is likely to harm some people at intermediate and high levels of the distribution of income but to benefit people at the bottom; where within a given occupation it may harm some workers while...

Can the increasing significance of knowledge-products in national income---the growing weightless economy---influence economic development? Those technologies reduce ``distance'' between consumers and knowledge production. This paper analyzes a model embodying such a reduction. The model shows...

How does information technology (IT) affect the organization of police work? How does it in turn affect police crime-fighting effectiveness? To answer these questions, we construct a new panel data set of police departments covering 1987-2003. We find that while IT adoption had substantial...

This Paper uses a German employer-employee matched panel dataset to investigate the effect of organizational and technological changes on gross job and worker flows. The empirical results indicate that organizational change is skill-biased because it reduces predominantly net employment growth...

We study the earnings structure and the equilibrium assignment of workers when they exert intra-firm spillovers on each other. We allow for arbitrary spillovers provided output depends on some aggregate index of workers' skill. Despite the possibility of increasing returns to skills, equilibrium...

This Paper analyses the welfare benefits from falling relative prices of IT (Information Technology) goods across a wide range of countries. Using two separate methodologies and datasets, we find that welfare benefits mainly accrue to users of IT, not their producers, because of falling relative...