Objective measures of performance are seldom perfect. In response, incentive contracts often include important subjective components that mitigate incentive distortions caused by imperfect objective measures. This paper explores the combined use of subjective and objective performance measures...

We analyze the role of implicit contracts' (that is, informal agreements supported byquot; reputation rather than law) both within firms, for example in employment relationships between them, for example as hand-in-glove supplier relationships. We find that the optimalquot; organizational form...

We analyze a rational-expectations model of information acquisition and price formation in an intermediate- good market: prices and net supply are non-negative, there are no noise traders, and the intermediate good has multiple potential uses. Several of our results differ from the classic...

We analyze a rational-expectations model of price formation in an intermediate-good market under uncertainty. There is a continuum of dyads, each consisting of an upstream party and a downstream party. Both parties can make specific investments at private cost, and there is a machine that either...

In this paper I summarize four new strands in agency theory that help me think about incentives in real organizations. As a point of departure, I being with a quick sketch of the classic agency model. I then discuss static models of objective performance measurement in which firms get what they...

We develop a dynamic model of learning and wage determination: education may convey initial information about ability, but subsequent performance observations also are informative. Although the role of schooling in the labor market's inference process declines as performance observations...

This paper analyzes strategic communication in equilibrium models of conventional and final-offer interest arbitration. Both models emphasize the role of learning by the arbitrator from the parties offers about the state of the employment relationship, which is known to the parties but not to...

In previous work we showed that a model that integrates job assignment, human-capital acquisition, and learning can explain several empirical findings concerning wage and promotion dynamics inside firms. In this paper we extend that model in two ways. First, we incorporate schooling into the...

This paper studies career concerns -- concerns about the effects of current performance on future compensation -- and describes how optimal incentive contracts are affected when career concerns are taken into account. Career concerns arise frequently: they occur whenever the market uses a...

We develop a model in which a worker's skills determine the worker's current wage and sector. Both the market and the worker are initially uncertain about some of the worker's skills. Endogenous wage changes and sector mobility occur as labor-market participants learn about these unobserved...