We test the hypothesis that universities are more productive when they are both more autonomous and face more competition. Using survey data, we construct indices of university autonomy and competition for both Europe and the United States. We show that there are strong positive correlations...

In this paper, we introduce the notion of transferable control, defined as a situation where one party (the principal, say) can transfer control to another party (the agent) but cannot commit herself to do so. One theoretical foundation for this notion builds on the distinction between formal...

This paper investigates contracting situations where giving away some control rights enhances both the donor's and the receiver's incentives to cooperate in the future. We define a partial contracting framework with nonverifiable actions for which either control is contractible (contractible...

This paper shows that introducing agency considerations into a model of innovations and growth can have radical consequences as to the effects of competition policy and industrial policy on the rate of technological change. Whilst competition policy (resp. industrial policy) has a negative...