In this paper, a principal's decision between delegating two tasks or handling one of the two tasks herself is analyzed. We assume that the principal uses both, formal contracts and informal agreements sustained by the value of future relationships (relational contracts) as incentive device. It...

The benefits and costs of different forms of job design have been analyzed in the literature yet. The focus has thereby mostly been on job designs under formal contracts between the parties. However, in the real world relational contracts - informal agreements sustained by the value of future...

The benefits and costs of different forms of job design have been analyzed in the literature yet. The focus has thereby mostly been on job designs under formal contracts between the parties. However, in the real world relational contracts - informal agreements sustained by the value of future...

In this paper, a principal's decision between delegating two tasks or handling one of the two tasks herself is analyzed. We assume that the principal uses both, formal contracts and informal agreements sustained by the value of future relationships (relational contracts) as incentive device. It...

The current paper studies discrimination in a model in which promotions are used as signals of worker ability. The model can account for both statistical and taste-based discrimination. A positive discrimination policy lowers the promotion standard for the workers who are discriminated against....

In this paper, a promotion tournament is considered, where, at the beginning of the tournament, it is unknown how long the tournament lasts. Further, the promotion decision is based on the assessments of a supervisor with imperfect recall. In line with psychological research, the supervisor is...

This paper addresses the selection problem in promotion tournaments. I consider a situation with heterogeneous employees and ask whether an employer might be interested in repeating a promotion tournament. On the one hand, this yields a reduction in uncertainty over the employees' abilities. On...

This paper addresses the selection problem in promotion tournaments. I consider a situation with heterogeneous employees and ask whether an employer might be interested in repeating a promotion tournament. On the one hand, this yields a reduction in uncertainty over the employees` abilities. On...

We study how the presence of promotion competition in the labor market affects household specialization patterns. By embedding a promotion tournament model in a household setting, we show that specialization can emerge as a consequence of competitive work incentives. This specialization outcome,...

We develop a general framework to study contests, containing the well-known models of Tullock (1980) and Lazear & Rosen (1981) as special cases. The contest outcome depends on players' effort and skill, the latter being subject to symmetric uncertainty. The model is tractable, because a...