We address the question how much authority a principal should delegate to a manager with conflicting interests and uncertain ability in a context in which the manager has both compensation-based and reputational incentives. The optimal level of authority balances the value of the manager's...

Casual observation suggests that cultural differences play an important role in business transactions, yet systematic evidence on this relationship is scarce. This paper provides a novel investigation of the effect of cultural distance on multinational firms' decisions to integrate their...

Production processes are increasingly organized in international value-chain networks. The involved firms can be operating at arm’s length or be vertically integrated. Both the incidence and the direction of integration (backward or forward in the value chain) depend on specific...

Production processes are increasingly organized in international value-chain networks. The involved firms can be operating at arm’s length or be vertically integrated. Both the incidence and the direction of integration (backward or forward in the value chain) depend on specific...

Casual observation suggests that cultural differences play an important role in business transactions, yet systematic evidence on this relationship is scarce. This paper provides a novel investigation of the effect of cultural distance on multinational firms’ decisions to integrate their...

Two types of agents interact on a pre-existing free platform. Agents value positively the presence of agents of the other type but may value negatively the presence of agents of their own type. We ask whether a new platform can find fees and subsidies so as to divert agents from the existing...

This study is framed against the increasingly stringent environmental demands on the pulp and paper industry since the late-1980s to reduce water and air pollution, and the global economic slowdown of the early-1990s. The primary focus of this paper is an observation-based analysis conducted by...

We examine the incentives and implications of supplier encroachment, when final good produc-tion requires the use of multiple complementary inputs and the entry of a supplier into the final good market gives rise to mutual outsourcing of inputs between the encroaching supplier and the incumbent....

This paper explores why competing firms can choose to outsource to an external common supplier that does not have a cost advantage in input production. The supplier, through its contract offers, manages to generate asymmetry, to alter product market competition, and to extract profits from the...

Two types of agents interact on a pre-existing free platform. Agents value positively the presence of agents of the other type but may value negatively the presence of agents of their own type. We ask whether a new platform can find fees and subsidies so as to divert agents from the existing...