This paper presents a contracting model of governance based on the premise that CEOs are the main promoters of governance change. CEOs use their power to extract higher pay or private benefits, and different governance structures are preferred by different CEOs as they favour one or the other...

We present evidence from a firm level experiment in which we engineered an exogenous change in managerial compensation from fixed wages to performance pay based on the average productivity of lower-tier workers. Theory suggests that managerial incentives affect both the mean and dispersion of...

We present evidence on the effect of social connections between workers and managers on productivity in the workplace. To evaluate whether the existence of social connections is beneficial to the firm's overall performance, we explore how the effects of social connections vary with the strength...

Many organizations rely on teamwork, and yet field evidence on the impacts of team-based incentives remains scarce. Compared to individual incentives, team incentives can affect productivity by changing both workers’ effort and team composition. We present evidence from a field experiment...

We use personnel data to compare worker productivity under a relative incentive scheme, where worker pay is negatively related to the average productivity of co-workers, with productivity under piece rates – where pay is based on individual productivity alone. We find that for the average...

This article examines the link between the integration processes at work in acquired companies and the results of acquisition. New questions are raised concerning the underlying mechanisms of the integration process, in which it is essential to identify those factors that lend value to the...

We study the determinants of private benefits of control in negotiated block transactions. We estimate the block pricing model in Burkart, Gromb, and Panunzi (2000) explicitly accounting for both block premia and block discounts in the data. The evidence suggests that the occurrence of a block...

Note: A substantially revised version of this paper has been published as CEPR DP7358, "Quantifying private benefits of control from a structural model of block trades." Please refer to DP7358 for the most up-to-date version. We study the determinants of private benefits of control in negotiated...

Corporations in many countries are run by controlling shareholders whose cash flow rights in the firm are substantially smaller than their control rights. This separation of ownership and control allows the controlling shareholders to pursue private benefits at the cost of minority investors by...