This Paper presents a new approach to the theory of the firm by identifying factor complementarities as central to the determination of the firm’s boundaries. The factor complementarities may take a variety of forms: technological and informational complementarities, as well as economies of...

The inheritance of contemporary financial economics invites us to consider financial stability as integral to a liberal market setting. The crisis however demonstrated that financial markets may prove highly dysfunctional in the absence of adequate mechanisms of regulation and governance. This...

We study how firm characteristics evolve from early business plan, to initial public offering, to public company for 49 venture capital financed companies. The average time elapsed is almost six years. We describe the financial performance, business idea, point(s) of differentiation, non-human...

We analyze optimal contracts and optimal matching patterns in a simple model of partnership where there is a double-sided moral hazard problem and potential partners differ in their productivity in two tasks. It is possible for one individual to accomplish both tasks (sole production) and there...

We augment efficiency-based theories of ownership by including influence costs. Our principal conclusion is that the prospect of organizational decline and layoffs creates additional influence costs in multi-unit organizations that would be absent if there were no prospect of layoffs and would...

Two types of intrinsically motivated workers are considered: "good" workers care about the mission of an organization, whereas "bad" workers derive pleasure from destructive behavior. While missionoriented organizations take advantage of the intrinsic motivation of good workers, they are more...

We study how career concerns affect the dynamics of incentives in a multi-period contract, when the agent’s productivity is a stochastic function of his past productivity and investment. We show that incentives are stronger and performance is higher when the contract approaches its expiry...

While transport costs have fallen, the empirical evidence also points at rising total trade costs. In a model of industry location with endogenous transaction costs, we show how and under which conditions a decline in transport costs can lead to an increase in the total cost of trade.

The standard property rights approach is focused on ex ante investment incentives, while there are no transaction costs that might restrain ex post negotiations. We explore the implications of such transaction costs. Prominent conclusions of the property rights theory may be overturned: A party...

This Paper discusses interest rate setting by the ECB between 1999 and 2004. I develop from the Monthly Bulletins quantitative indicators of the Governing Council’s assessment of inflation, economic activity, and M3 growth, and investigate their impact on its interest rate decisions. I also...