Effective monitoring requires proper incentives and detection skill. Detection skills depend on the extent of specialization in monitoring and on the number of agents to be supervised. This paper demonstrates that hierarchy and monitoring of monitors can provide the necessary incentives for the...

Many industrialized economies have seen a rapid rise in top income inequality and in the globalization of production since the 1980s. In this paper I propose an open economy model of executive pay to study how offshoring affects the pay level and incentives of top earners. The model introduces a...

Many industrialized economies have seen a rapid rise in top income inequality and in the globalization of production since the 1980s. In this paper I propose an open economy model of executive pay to study how offshoring affects the pay level and incentives of top earners. The model introduces a...

Private sector corporations in the United States fall short of their potential to increase shareholders'1 wealth in a number of ways. One example is the failure to undertake profitable energy conservation investments. Explanations of this phenomenon include agency and moral hazard problems,...

We consider the response to incentives as an explanation for productivity differences within a firm that paid its workers piece rates. We provide a framework within which observed productivity differences can be decomposed into two parts: one due to differences in ability and the other due to...

We model an organization as a hierarchy of managers erected on top of a technology (here consisting of a collection of plants). In our framework, the role of a manager is to take steps to reduce the adverse consequences of shocks that affect the plants beneath him. We argue that different...

Effective monitoring requires proper incentives and detection skill. Detection skills depend on the extent of specialization in monitoring and on the number of agents to be supervised. This paper demonstrates that hierarchy and monitoring of monitors can provide the necessary incentives for the...

Data from a field experiment conducted within a tree-planting firm are used to estimate the gain in productivity that is realized when workers are paid piece rates rather than fixed wages. The experiment provides daily observations on individual worker productivity under both piece rates and...

We consider the response to incentives as an explanation for productivity differences within a firm that paid its workers piece rates. We provide a framework within which observed productivity differences can be decomposed into two parts: one due to differences in ability and the other due to...