Agency costs are a cost of production, and firms that do a better job of minimizing these costs should exhibit better performance. This paper tests this hypothesis by calculating the performance elasticity of average employee hourly compensation for U.S. manufacturing firms. This elasticity...

The existing debate about policies designed to foster the development of a stakeholder economy have largely avoided a fundamental question. How large is the financial stake employees currently hold in their companies? This paper addresses this question using data from the Datastream database,...

We aim at investigating to what extent reciprocal considerations, exhibited by employers and employees, should lead to stable gift exchange practices in the labor contract, giving rise to non- compensating wage differentials among industries. We use the concept of Sequential Reciprocity...

In this paper we examine intra-firm competition in the mutual fund industry. Our empirical study of the US mutual fund industry shows for the first time that managers within mutual fund families compete against each other. They adjust the risk they take depending on the relative position within...

Using an econometric procedure that corrects for both self-selection of individuals into their preferred compensation scheme and wage endogeneity, this study investigates whether significant differences exist in the job satisfaction of individuals receiving performance- related pay (PRP)...

The problem of coordination failure, particularly in 'team production' situations, is central to a large number of mircroeconomic as well as macroeconomic models. As this type of inefficient coordination poses a severe economic problem, there is a need for institutions that foster efficient...

The model developed in this paper attempts to provide an explanation of the fact that Icelandic vessel owners and Icelandic skippers do not share costs of operation of a vessel. In the model a skipper is contracted to take a fishing vessel to the fishing ground. The skipper is remunerated with a...