We model a firm in an institutional market setting, consisting of a production technology and its governance. The governance consists of a hierarchical firm structure, a cost efficiency parameter,and an internal pay system. The depth of the firm is determined by profit maximization under the...

This paper analyzes the economic foundations of a non-democratic political regime, where the ruling bureaucracy captures rents through collective control over state property and job assignment. The model developed here yields the equilibrium in the 'political labor market,' where the ruling...

The paper is concerned with instructions as a way of setting premises for subsequent decisions in models of teams à la Marschak-Radner, under information diversification. The paper suggests that instructions can bridge people's differences in knowledge: they do not require mutual understanding...

We analyze the strategic behavior of firms when demand is determined by a rule of thumb behavior of consumers. We assume consumer dynamics where individual consumers follow simple behavioral decision rules governed by imitation and habit as suggested in consumer research. On this basis, we...

In a dynamic general equilibrium model we explictly consider the relationship between the product attributes 'durability' and 'recyclability'. Both efficiency and sustainability aspects are taken into account. It turns out (a) that durability may be inefficient even in a perfectly competitive...

Many economic organizations have some relational structure, meaning that economic agents do not only differ with respect to certain individual characteristics such as wealth and preferences, but also belong to some relational structure in which they usually take different positions. Two examples...

The power to coerce workers is important for the efficient operation of hierarchically structured organizations. However, this power can also be used by managers to exploit their subordinates for their own benefit. We examine the relationship between the power to coerce and exploitation in a...

North Korea is perceived by many as one of the most totalitarian societies of modern time. But in the wake of the economic collapse of the 1990s, North Korean totalitarianism has grappled with new conditions. This paper examines how the country's totalitarian character has been upheld through...

We investigate the effect of market structure on market performance in the market for consumer electronics. This research is novel, because we exploit product life cycle information to build an instrumental variable for the number of firms in a market, a variable which hitherto had to be treated...