We provide a methodology to study the role of market distortions on the emergence of indeterminacy and bifurcations. Most of the specific market imperfections considered in the related literature are particular cases of our framework. Comparing them we obtain several equivalence results in terms...

We provide the first estimates of the impact of managers' risk preferences on their training allocation decisions. Our conceptual framework links managers' risk preferences to firms' training decisions through the bonuses they expect to receive. Risk-averse managers are expected to select...

We show that the disposition to focus on favorable or unfavorable outcomes of risky situations affects willingness to take risk as measured by the general risk question. We demonstrate that this disposition, which we call risk conception, is strongly associated with optimism, a stable facet of...

We revisit the incentive effects of elimination tournaments with a fresh approach to identification, the results of which strongly support that performance improves under the threat of elimination and does so, but only in part, due to increases in risk taking. Where we can separately identify...

How does small-firm employment respond to exogenous labor productivity risk? We find that this depends on the capitalization of firms' local banks. The evidence comes from firms offering (quasi-) fixed employment to workers whose productivity depends on the weather. Weather risk reduces this...

Firms differ in the extent to which they use variable pay. Using U.S. employeeemployer matched data on variable pay from Glassdoor, we document such dispersion and find workers are exposed to firm-level shocks through variable pay. Credit rating downgrades from investment to speculative grade,...