A recently much debated issue is why observed investment and growth rates inpoor countries are lower than traditional theory predicts. Empirical evidencesuggests that social and political instability is a major reason for thedivergence between poor and rich countries. However, there is still the...

We present a dynamic model of the interaction between interest groupsand policymakers, featuringendogenous interest group formation. We show that complicated dynamicpatterns in economicpolicies may arise once interest group formation is taken intoaccount.

Organizations must not only take the right decisions, they must also ensure that these decisions are effectively implemented. Fama and Jensen (1983) argue that the same members of many organization are often responsible for both decision initiation and implementation. If these have social...

In this paper we consider the problem of the control of access to a firm's productive asset, embedding the relevant decisionmakers into a general structure of formal authority relations. Within such an authority structure, each decision maker acts as a principal to some decision makers, while...

How much does a nation spend on resources to 'grease the wheels of trade'? To examine this question the Dutch economy is used as an exemplary case as the Netherlands are known as a nation of traders. This image was derived in the seventeenth century from successes in long distance trade,...

We model a firm in an institutional market setting, consisting of a production technology and its governance. The governance consists of a hierarchical firm structure, a cost efficiency parameter,and an internal pay system. The depth of the firm is determined by profit maximization under the...

We consider a hierarchical organization with two fully rational agents. The goal of the organization is that of selecting the best alternative out of several available, and agents are heterogenous in the accuracy with which they screen the alternatives. We show that, if internal communications...

This article presents an agent-based modelof Prato, an Italian textile district where thousands ofsma1l firms specialise into tiny phases of the whole production process. It is an empirical model atscale 1: 1 that reconstructs the information flows between economic actors and connects them...