We investigate the relationship between CEO centrality -- the relative importance of the CEO within the top executive team in terms of ability, contribution, or power -- and the value and behavior of public firms. Our proxy for CEO centrality is the fraction of the top-five compensation captured...

Most government expenditure is on goods that yield primarily private benefits, such as education, pensions, and healthcare. We argue that markets are most advantageous in areas where high-powered incentives are desirable, but in areas where high-powered incentives stimulate unproductive...

Using firm-, industry-, and country-level data, we document a link between family ownership and labor relations. Across countries, we find that family ownership is relatively more prevalent in countries in which labor relations are difficult, consistent with firm-level evidence suggesting that...

This paper provides an overview of the main theoretical elements and empirical underpinnings of a managerial power' approach to executive compensation. Under this approach, the design of executive compensation is viewed not only as an instrument for addressing the agency problem between managers...

A fundamental problem entrepreneurs face in the formative stages of their businesses is how to provide incentives for employees to protect, rather than steal, the source of organizational rents. We study how the entrepreneur's response to this problem will determine the organization's internal...

In the last few years a new area has emerged in economic theory, which goes under the heading of However, almost since its inception, the theory has been under attack for its lack of rigorous foundations. In this paper, we evaluate some of the criticisms that have been made of the theory, in...

What makes a good leader? A good leader is able to coordinate his followers around a credible mission statement, which communicates the future course of action of the organization. In practice, leaders learn about the best course of action for the organization over time. While learning helps...

There are two different types of media bias. One bias, which we refer to as ideology, reflects a news outlet's desire to affect reader opinions in a particular direction. The second bias, which we refer to as spin, reflects the outlet's attempt to simply create a memorable story. We examine...

Local governments can provide services with their own employees or by contracting with private or public sector providers. We develop a model of this "make-or-buy" choice that highlights the trade-off between productive efficiency and the costs of contract administration. We construct a dataset...

This paper surveys two related pieces of the labor-economics literature: incentive pay and careers in organizations. In the discussion of incentives, I first summarize theory and evidence related to the classic agency model, which emphasizes the tradeoff between insurance and incentives. I then...