A growing empirical literature attributes much of the productivity advantages of large, "superstar" firms to their adoption of best practice management techniques that allow them to better identify and use talented workers. The reasons for the incomplete adoption of these "structured management...

Consider an agent (manager, artist, etc.) who has imperfect private information about his productivity. At the beginning of his career (period 1, short run"), the agent chooses among publicly observable actions that generate imperfect signals of his productivity. The actions can be ranked...

This paper investigates the possibility that wealth (holdings of money) serves as a signal of ability to produce high quality products for agents who cannot directly observe the quality of the products. A producer's wealth may advertise past success in selling products to agents who knew the...

We develop a model of consulting (advising) where the role of the consultant is that she can reveal signals to her client which refine the client’s original private estimate of the profitability of a project. Importantly, only the client can observe or evaluate these signals, the consultant...

We examine the impact of labor market power on firms' adoption of automation technologies. We develop a model that incorporates labor market power into the task-based theory of automation. We show that, due to higher marginal cost of labor, monopsonistic firms have stronger incentives to...

This paper analyzes the cyclical properties of worker flows in Brazil and Mexico, two important developing countries with large unregulated or "informal" sectors. It generates three stylized facts that are critical to the accurate modeling of the sector and which suggest the need to rethink the...

Models to the issue of altruism which rely on externalities of well-being are rarely used explicitly. In this paper we compare such utility-based approaches with the standard approach on altruism which is based on externalities of income. Testable differences of both types of models are derived...

We empirically examine the efficacy of various incentives of microlending contracts such as joint-liability or group access to future loans. We find that joint liability induces a group formation of low risk borrowers. Furthermore, the incentive system leads to peer measures between the...

This discussion paper considers insurance as a possible instrument of farm income stabilization and compares several crop insurance products with respect to their applicability in a transition economy using the case of Kazakhstan. The analysis is based on a qualitative evaluation as well a...