Does the cultural background influence the success with which genetically unrelated individuals cooperate in social dilemma situations? In this paper we provide an answer by analyzing the data of Herrmann et al. (Science 2008, pp. 1362-1367), who study cooperation and punishment in sixteen...

We model non-binding retail-price recommendations (RPRs) as a communication device facilitating coordination in vertical supply relations. Assuming both repeated vertical trade and asymmetric information about production costs, we show that RPRs may be part of a relational contract,...

This paper analyzes to what extent gender culture affects gender gap in employment. Drawing on Italian data, we measure culture by building two indices: one based on individual attitudes, as done in the existing literature; one based on firms’ attitudes. Firms’ beliefs, which express their...

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 levels. I...

Authority and power permeate political, social, and economic life, but empirical knowledge about the motivational origins and consequences of authority is limited. We study the motivation and incentive effects of authority experimentally in an authority-delegation game. Individuals often retain...

Strong forces lead to a withering of academia as it exists today. The major causal forces are the rankings mania, increased division of labor in research, intense publication pressure, academic fraud, dilution of the concept of “university,” and inadequate organizational forms for modern...

We investigate the impacts of electricity market restructuring on fuel efficiency, utilization and, new to this area, cost of coal purchases among coal-fired power plants using a panel data set from 1991 to 2005. Our study focuses exclusively on coal-fired power plants and uses panel data...

Evidence of owners of small businesses engaging in tax motivated shifts in organizational form is scarce. The main reason is lack of micro data enabling us to track tax-payers' movements across organizational modes. By exploiting new panel data that combine information from several public...

We show how temporary ownership by private equity firms affects industry structure, competition and welfare. Temporary ownership leads to strong investment incentives because equilibrium resale prices are determined by buyers incentives to block rivals from obtaining assets. These incentives...