I analyze a model in which a principal offers a contract to an agent and can influence the agent’s marginal return of effort by the choice of the project mission. The principal’s and the agents’ mission preferences are misaligned, and the agents have unobservable intrinsic motivation...

Inspired by a recent observation about an online retail company, this paper explains why a firm may find it optimal to offer an exit bonus to recent hires so as to induce self-selection. We study a double adverse selection problem, in which the principal can neither observe agents’ commitment...

We study, theoretically and empirically, the effects of incentives on the self-selection and coordination of motivated agents to produce a social good. Agents join teams where they allocate effort to either generate individual monetary rewards (selfish effort) or contribute to the production of...

We study the performance effects of payment schemes for freelancers offering services on an online platform in an RCT. Under the initial scheme, the firm pays workers a pure sales commission. The intervention reduces the commission rate and adds a fixed payment per processed order to insure...

We consider a model in which business public services must be financed with either a source-based tax on mobile capital, such as a property tax, or a tax on production, such as an origin-based VAT and assess which of the two tax instruments is more efficient. In general, both a capital tax and a...

We collect information about more than 5,000 Prussian politicians, digitize administrative data on the provision of health-promoting public goods, and gather local-level information on workers' movements to study why elites in industrializing countries implement policies that improve the health...

We collect information about more than 5,000 Prussian politicians, digitize administrative data on the provision of health-promoting public goods, and gather local-level information on workers’ movements to study why elites in industrializing countries implement policies that improve the...

Work-related stress has reportedly increased over time. Using worker-level survey data, we build a measure of work pressure strongly associated with adverse health outcomes. In line with theories of compensating differentials, work pressure comes with a sizable earnings premium, even within...

Contributing to a social cause can be an important driver for workers in the public and non-profit sector as well as in firms that engage in Corporate Philanthropy or other Corporate Social Responsibility policies. This paper compares the effectiveness of social incentives - that take the form...

We analyze cooperation within a company setting in order to study the relationship between cooperative attitudes and financial as well as non-financial rewards. In total, 910 employees of a large software company participate in an incentivized online experiment. We observe high levels of...