The effects of the quality of institutions on economic development and comparative advantage have been so far investigated separately. This paper proposes a theoretical framework in which trade patterns and growth rates are jointly determined by international differences in contract enforcement...

We model the determinants of who makes decisions, the principal or an agent, when there are multiple decisions. Decision making takes effort and time; and, once implemented, the expected loss from a particular decision (or project) increases with the length of time since the last decision was...

The seminal work by Grossman and Hart (1986) made the study of firm boundaries susceptible to formal economic analysis, and illuminated an important role for markets in providing incentives. In this essay, I discuss some new directions that the literature has taken since. As a central challenge,...

In the property rights approach to the theory of the firm (Hart, 1995), parties bargain about whether or not to collaborate after non-contractible investments have been made. Most contributions apply the regular Nash bargaining solution. We explore the implications of using the generalized Nash...

The literature on within-firm organizational change and productivity suggests that firms can make more efficient use of certain technologies if complementary forms of organization are adopted. This issue may be of even greater importance for the case of greenhouse gas (GHG) abatement...

We explore the optimal delegation of decision rights by a principal to a better informed but biased agent. In an infinitely repeated game a long-lived principal faces a series of short-lived agents. Every period they play a cheap talk game a la Crawford and Sobel (1982) with constant bias,...

We develop a model in which multinational investors decide about the modes of organization, the locations of production, and the markets to be served. Foreign investments are driven by market-seeking and cost-reducing motives. We further assume that investors face costs of control that vary...

We survey an emerging literature at the intersection of organizational economics and international trade. We argue that a proper modelling of the organizational aspects of production provides valuable insights on the aggregate workings of the world economy. In reviewing the literature, we...

Consider Holmström.s moral hazard in teams problem when there are n agents, each agent i has a a(i)-dimensional strategy space and output can be m-dimensional. We show that a compensation mechanism that satisfies budget balance, limited liability and implements an efficient allocation...

This paper discusses the optimal organization of sequential agency problems with contractible control actions under limited liability. In each of two stages, a risk-neutral agent can choose an unobservable effort level. A success in the first stage makes effort in the second stage more...