Dual production specifications derived under certainty are typically randomized for econometric purposes with ad hoc error specifications. This article shows that such approaches can cause integrability conditions to fail. In particular, if errors in input demands represent errors in...

A conceptual analysis of important issues in the organization and management of academic research is presented. Principal-agent theory is applied to derive optimal compensation schemes for scientists when they differ in ability, risk aversion, cost of effort, and reservation utility, and to show...

This dissertation explores the nature and scope of vertical coordination in the U.S. beef industry. From the perspective of the incomplete contract theory of the industrial organization literature, this dissertation first provides a theoretical economic explanation for the traditional and...

Vertical coordination through contracts between farmers and other stages of the agro food chain have been of growing importance in US agriculture. Production contract arrangements between contractors and individual growers have been one of the major vehicles of this emerging system of vertical...

This study is an enquiry about the role that service quality, asymmetric information, scope of regulation and regulator's preferences play in the regulation of monopolies, with an application to the case of the Chilean electricity distribution industry. In Chapter 1, I present the problem of...