There is ample evidence that incentive-pay structures, such as tournaments, result in increased performance. Is this due to selection or increased individual effort, and is any increased individual effort caused by pecuniary incentives or merely thirst for the thrill of victory (TOV)? Prior...

We examine the correlation between federal government activity and performance of the capital’s National Football League team, the Washington Redskins. We find a positive, non-spurious, and robust correlation between the Redskins’ winning percentage and bureaucratic output, measured by pages...

This paper provides the first empirical test of the Portia Hypothesis: Females with masculine monikers are more successful in legal careers. Utilizing South Carolina microdata, we look for correlation between an individual's advancement to a judgeship and his-her name's masculinity, which we...

Experimental choices between delayed rewards are claimed to provide support for a model of preferences referred to variously as "quasi-hyperbolic," "hyperbolic," and "‚-‰." This paper shows that the experimental results do not differentiate quasi-hyperbolic discounting from exponential...

New Zealand recently initiated sweeping reforms to its social welfare program by cutting benefits and tightening eligibility criteria. One of the objectives of these reforms was to provide incentives for people to enter or re-enter the labor force. Econometric analysis is used in this paper to...

This study examines the characteristics of corporate boards for 82 companies that attempted 106 acquisitions during the 1980s. We find that poor performance is more likely to occur in firms that have recently experienced higher turnover of outside and lower turnover of inside directors....