This paper identifies globalization as a factor behind the rapid increase in executive compensation and inequality over the last few decades. Employing comprehensive data on top executives at major U.S. companies, we show that compensation is higher at more global firms. We find that pay...

We conduct a field experiment in a controlled work environment to investigate the effect of motivational talk and its interaction with monetary incentives. We find that motivational talk significantly improves performance only if it is accompanied by performance pay. Moreover, performance pay...

Unemployment insurance (UI) sanctions in the form of benefit reductions are intended to set disincentives for UI recipients to stay unemployed. Empirical evidence about the effects of UI sanctions in Germany is sparse. Using administrative data we investigate the effects of sanctions on the...

We derive determinants of tax avoidance by means of a multi-task principal-agent model. We extend prevailing models by integrating both corporate and individual income taxation as well as by including tax planning effort in the agent's action portfolio. Our model shows novel and apparently...

The distribution of unemployment duration in our equilibrium matching model with spell-dependent unemployment benefits displays a time-varying exit rate. Building on Semi-Markov processes, we translate these exit rates into an expression for the aggregate unemployment rate. Structural estimation...