Existing research on tournament-style contests suggests that mechanisms to sort contestants by ability level are unnecessary in the case of linear relative-performance contracts. This paper suggests that this result stems from uniform treatment of workers' marginal returns from effort, marginal...

During the 14-month period from May 2002 to June 2003, approximately 10 percent of U.S. supermarkets began to offer fresh irradiated ground beef under the stores' own labels. Using a survey of supermarket store managers from this time period, this paper investigates the factors that influenced...

We investigate the design of a two-period contract between an agricultural processor and growers whose quality-ability types are not observable to the processor. After characterizing the optimal contracts and establishing conditions for a separating equilibrium, we investigate how a payment...