In an earlier work, we analyzed how the legal rules governing contractual liability affect the transfer of information between the parties to the contract. In particular, we showed how limitations on contractual liability might lead high valuation buyers to reveal their valuation of performance,...

In this paper, the choice between public and private provision of goods and services is considered. In practice, both modes of operation involve significant delegation of authority, and thus appear quite similar in some respects. The argument here is that the main difference between the two mod-...

Although the role of the services sector in the economy has grown increasingly large, and partnerships are a prevalent form of organization in this sector, relatively little is known about the behavior and performance of these firms. In this paper an attempt is made to fill that gap by...

The purpose of this paper is to address the role of endogenous default penalties that are contingent upon the intensity of default on the part of the borrowing nation, and to evaluate the effects of contingency plans that make the interest rate dependent upon variables that are correlated with...

With the growth of the literature on incentive compensation has come the belief by some that incentive pay may be less rigid than pay that is not designed to effect incentives. Some have gone so far as to argue that this may explain differences in unemployment rates across countries. it is shown...

Before 1979, unemployment insurance (UI) benefits were not treated as taxable income in the United States. Several economists criticized this policy on the ground that not taxing UI benefits while taxing earned income allegedly encourages unemployed persons to conduct longer than socially...

This paper addresses two questions:(1) Are older persons' retirement ages significantly affected by the opportunities for income from earnings,private pensions, and Social Security and for leisure at alternative retirement ages?; and (2) How large are the estimated responses? Our approach to...

Many provisions of the Social Security Program distort an individual's labor supply incentives. In particular, the payroll tax, the earnings test, the offsetting actuarial adjustment, and the dependence of the size of future benefits on the level of current earnings all affect the net return to...

This paper presents a detailed examination of the effect of piece rates and other forms of incentive compensation on individual employee earnings. The study examines the impact of incentives on the earnings of over 100,000 employees in 500 firms within the footwear and men's and boys' clothing...

This paper examines the characteristics of and interactions among measures to effect saving and investment incentives ("S-I incentives")in the context of an income tax system that is inadequately indexed for inflation. Examples are proposals for more rapid depreciation of buildings and equipment...