This paper develops a model in which workers are heterogeneous in their intrinsic motivation to work at a firm. We characterise optimal incentive schemes and examine how the firm can attract and select highly motivated workers to fill a vacancy when workers’ motivation is private information....

In this paper, I study the wage a firm sets to attract high ability workers (hipo's) in situations of unemployment. I show that the higher unemployment, the larger a firm's incentives to sort high and low ability workers. Moreover, workers will signal their (high) ability in situations of (high)...

I consider a situation in which heterogenous senders (applicants) compete in order to be selected by one receiver (employer). Productivity is private information to the senders, and the receiver processes imperfect signals (applications) to screen among applicants. The information-processing...

Organization differ in the degree to which they differentiate employees by ability. We analyse how the effect of differentiation on employee morale may explain this variation. By comparing employees using ordinary talk, a manager boosts the self-image of some, but hurts that of others. Whether...

When hiring an adviser (he), a policy maker (she) often faces the problem that she has incomplete information about his preferences. Some advisers are good, in the sense that their preferences are closely aligned to the policy maker's preferences, and some advisers are bad. Recently, some...

Labor market theories allowing for search frictions make marked predictions on the effect of the degree of frictions on wages. Often, the effect is predicted to be negative. Despite the popularity of these theories, this has never been tested. We perform tests with matched worker-firm data. The...

A physician performs two tasks: making diagnoses and determining treatments. To reduce medical error, residents are supposed to consult their supervisors when they face uncommon circumstances. However, recent research shows that residents are reluctant to do so. This paper presents a model that...

Transparent decision-making processes are widely regarded as a prerequisite for the working of a representative democracy. It facilitates accountability, and citizens may suspect that decisions, if taken behind closed doors, do not promote their interests. Why else the secrecy? We provide a...

Some committees are made up of experts, persons interested in both the (subject) matter at hand and in coming across as able decision-makers. Such committees would like to conceal disagreement from the public. We present a theory that describes the reaction of experts to the requirement to...

We investigate the nature of the adverse selection problem in a market for a durable good where trading and entry of new buyers and sellers takes place in continuous time. In the continuous time model equilibria with properties that are qualitatively different from the static equilibria, emerge....