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...

Corporate Boards usually come in two different shapes: unitary and dual. In the former, a single board/principal is responsible for monitoring and establishing performance targets; in the latter, these tasks are split between two boards/principals. This paper compares these two arrangements in...

The subprime crisis highlights how little we know about the governance of banks. This paper addresses a long-standing gap in the literature by analyzing board governance using a sample of banking firm data that spans forty years. We examine the relationship between board structure (size and...

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...

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...

In den vergangenen Jahrzehnten ist ein Trend hin zu flacheren Organisationen mit weniger Hierarchieebenen zu verzeichnen gewesen. Eine Verringerung der Anzahl an Führungsstufen kann sowohl positive als auch negative Auswirkungen auf den wirtschaftlichen Erfolg eines Unternehmens haben. Der...