Using personnel data, we compare worker productivity under a relative incentive scheme -where pay is based on individual productivity relative to the average productivity of the group- to productivity under piece rates. We find that productivity is at least 50% higher under piece rates. Further...

External recruitment has often been viewed as a necessary evil in that it trades off the need for outside talents with the incentives of inside workers. This paper, however, shows that even from an incentive viewpoint, external recruitment has its positive role to play. Specifically, if...

The consumption value of education is an important, but rather ignored factor behind the individual's educational choice. This paper suggests a method for measuring the consumption value of education in a compensating differentials framework when the ability bias is corrected for. As an example,...

Venture capitalists enjoy incentive-laden compensation schemes where they are paid a fixed amount (management fees) plus a share of profit (success fees). This scheme is of course intended to provide venture capitalists with strong incentives under the heavy information asymmetry (Sahlman, 1982,...

This paper is concerned with the dynamics of competition in American political campaigns, in particular with how the type of message a candidate sends is affected by the stage of the campaign, the status of the candidate, and the competitiveness of the race. The paper examines the allocation of...

This paper addresses the relationship between individual perceptions and the uses of a business language. Perceptions are modeled explicitly, and are not common knowledge. A business language enables individuals with different perceptions to trade. I present a formal criterion for faithfulness...

I develop a Markov model of samrt money chasing past winning funds while taking into account associated costs. The model also allows market capital entry and exit. The steady-state capital allocations re derived using constant transition probabilities. The results sugget that down side risk is...

This paper examines the long-run dynamics and the cyclical structure of the US stock market using fractional integration techniques. We implement a version of the tests of Robinson (1994a), which enables one to consider unit (or fractional) roots both at the zero (long-run) and at the cyclical...

This paper develops a search-theoretic model of the cross-sectional distribution of asset returns. It abstracts from risk premia and focuses exclusively on liquidity. A float-adjusted return model (FARM) is derived, explaining the pricing of liquidity with a simple linear formula: In...

We introduce continuous-time models that capture the salient features of the short-term interest rate and remain tractable for asset pricing applications. We extend classical specifications within and outside of the affine class to multi-factor settings with latent variables that are readily...