Globalisation, governance and economic performance affect each other in very complex mutual relationships. In this paper, we establish a clear and well-circumscribed hypothesis: “is there an effect of globalisation on governance?” To test this hypothesis or, even more specifically, to test...

The Hayek Hypothesis holds that prices contain enough information to direct the resources in the economy to their most efficient use. In a series of experiments, Vernon Smith [1987] found that with the right trading institutions, a market with agents that know only their own valuations of a good...

This paper proposes a two-country 'economic' model (in the sense that it contains utility and profit maximization motives), in which a low-income economy enjoys a high growth rate relative to a high-income economy, thanks to importing technologies (or 'machines') invented in the high- income...

The paper analyzes investment behavior of industrial enterprises in the period immediately following price and foreign trade liberalization in the Czech Republic. It also focuses on the effect of Asoft@ macroeconomic environment on the microeconomic decisions. A dynamic investment function with...

Divided societies in the developing world experience wasteful struggles for power. We study the relationship between political stability and resources wasted in the struggle within a model of competitive power contests. The model of power contests is similar in structure to models describing...

This note draws upon ecological models to describe the structure and equilibrium conditions of a generalized economic canopy consisting of three interactive economies assumed to be in competitive epiphytic, parasitic, and host relationships to each other. The maintained hypothesis is that...

The purpose of this paper is to show that the common law governing the employment of labor makes the distinction not only between employee and independent contractor but also between managerial control and agency. The idea is that common law precedents govern workers who are employed and...

The paper analyzes voluntary Free Software/Open Source Software (FS/OSS) organization of work. The empirical setting considered is the Debian GNU/Linux operating system. The paper finds that the production process is hierarchical notwithstanding the modular (nearly decomposable) architecture of...

This paper shows how fixed costs can play an important role in determining the structure of organizations. Applications considered include layoffs, downsizing, heterogeneity among firms, and the structure of hierarchies. Agency problems as a source of fixed costs are also considered.

We examine the relationship between the optimal incentive contract and the firm’s decision to fire a manager for poor performance. We first derive some theoretical results using a simple principal-agent model, and then examine the empirical evidence on the incidence of forced turnover among...