In this article, we empirically study the survival of the ruling party in parliamentary democracies using a hazard rate model. We define survival of a crisis as being successful in a critical vote in the parliament. We develop a general probabilistic model of political crises and test it...

In this paper we study the role of covenants in franchise contracts that restrict the recruitment and hiring of employees from other units within the same franchise chain in suppressing competition for workers. Based on an analysis of 2016 Franchise Disclosure Documents, we find that...

This paper discusses the literature on the enforcement of incomplete contracts. It compares legal enforcement to enforcement via relationships and reputations. A number of mechanisms, such as the repeat purchase mechanism (Klein and Leffler (1981)) and efficiency wages (Shapiro and Stiglitz...

This paper shows that optimal unemployment insurance contracts are age-dependent. Older workers have only a few years left on the labor market prior to retirement. This short horizon implies a more digressive replacement ratio. However, there is a sufficiently short distance to retirement for...

"We devise an experiment to explore the effect of different degrees of competition on optimal contracts in a hidden-information context. In our benchmark case, each principal is matched with one agent of unknown type. In our second treatment, a principal can select one of three agents, while in...

This paper discusses the strategic role of mismatching, where players voluntarily form inefficient teams or forego the formation of efficient teams, respectively. Strategic mismatching can be rational when players realize a competitive advantage (e.g. harming other competitors). In addition, the...