Distorted performance measures in compensation contracts elicit suboptimal behavioral responses that may even prove to be dysfunctional (gaming). This paper applies the empirical test developed by Courty and Marschke (2008) to detect whether the widely used class of Residual Income based...

Distorted performance measures in compensation contracts elicit suboptimal behavioral responses that may even prove to be dysfunctional (gaming). This paper applies the empirical test developed by Courty and Marschke (2008) to detect whether the widely used class of Residual Income based...

Baker (2002) has demonstrated theoretically that the quality of performance measures used in compensation contracts hinges on two characteristics: noise and distortion. These criteria, though, will only be useful in practice as long as the noise and distortion of a performance measure can be...

This paper focuses on a new concern in the small firm’s literature, namely what makes a small firm stay in business for a long time. It reflects a change in economic policy, away from an emphasis on volume of start-ups to an emphasis on quality of start-ups. The basic hypothesis is that...

Fragmentation of production into more and more complex supply chains is a prominent feature of globalisation. It implies that transaction costs as part of total costs of ownership carry a large weight in procurement decisions. An analysis of the various types of transaction costs is also...

This paper examines how a radical technological innovation affects alliance formation of firms and subsequent network structures. We use longitudinal data of interfirm R&D collaborations in the biopharmaceutical industry in which a new technological regime is established. Our findings suggest...

The business performance of firms in the creative high-tech sector shows much variation. This paper examines whether the geographical location of such business firms influences the performance of these firms. The overarching analysis framework of this paper emerges from the recently developed...

This paper analyzes the effect of carrier collaboration on fleet capacity, fleet structures in terms of the number and the size of vehicles, and load factors. The model features complementary networks, scheduling, price elastic demands, and demand uncertainty. For the case of a given number of...

Contract audits aimed at reducing information asymmetry and transaction costs are frequently used in imperfect markets such as defense procurement. This contradicts predictions from standard economic theory. We conduct a laboratory experiment to investigate this paradox. Our laboratory setup...

Women are often less willing than men to compete, even in tasks where there is no gender gap in performance. Also, many people experience competitive contexts as stressful and previous research has documented that men and women sometimes react differently to acute stressors. We use two...