Subjects chose whether to leave with an endowment or stay to perform some simple tasks in a real effort experiment. In addition to performance pay, staying subjects received their endowment in the control condition, but had to sacrifice it in the treatment condition. We found average performance...

This paper estimates economic returns to physical capital and inherent ability among Indonesian fishermen using a natural experiment. By exploiting the quasi-random variation in the length of fishing boats generated by an aid program among survivors of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, it is found...

A large sample of new plants is studied to reveal detailed adjustment behavior for capital, labor and productivity. Once production has begun, capital adjusts almost as quickly as labor. Overall, capital adjustment is lumpy while labor follows a learning-by-doing model rather than a convex...

We study a winner-take-all R&D race where firms are privately informed about the uncertain arrival rate of the invention. Due to the interdependent-value nature of the problem, the equilibrium displays a strong herding effect that distinguishes our framework from war-of-attrition models....

One key driver of improvement in surgical outcomes is a surgeon’s prior experience. However, research notes that not all experience provides equal value for performance. How then should surgeons accumulate experience to improve quality outcomes? In this paper we investigate the differential...

Managers often use tournament incentive schemes which motivate workers to compete for the top, compete to avoid the bottom, or both. In this paper we test the effectiveness and efficiency of these incentive schemes. To do so, we utilize optimal contracts in a principal-agent setting, using a...

Until recently "deceleration" has been little recognized as a technical term or as an idea, but now it seems to be getting more attention. Despite time is a decisive factor for the productivity and competitive advantages of companies continual acceleration may well be counter-productive and lead...