This paper considers the twofold problem of compensation contracting and the design of a human capital investment scheme. Before contracting the principal and the agent can engage in a joint stochastic production process of exerting effort to raise the agent's productivity in the firm. The...

In this paper we investigate the ways in which new forms of organization enabled by digital technologies such as crowdsourcing and digital marketplaces are allowing firms to circumvent and defy traditional knowledge constraints. This is part of the broader question of when and why these forms of...

Pure incentive schemes rely on agent self-interest, rather than more coercive control, to motivate subordinates. Yet most organizations, and in particular public agencies, rely very little on pure incentive contracts. Most organizations rely on the primarily coercive mechanisms of monitoring and...

This paper uses a novel approach to measure firm entry and exit, mergers and acquisition. It uses information about the flows of clusters of workers across business units to identify longitudinal linkage relationships in longitudinal business data. These longitudinal relationships may be the...

In this paper, we employ a sequential production setting in order to study the tradeoff between timeliness and accuracy of a signal about productivity. An information externality arises because the upstream agent's information is disseminated to the downstream agent, and affects production...

This paper considers a hidden action agency model in which an agent can be incentivized to simultaneously work and self train to increase productivity. We determine conditions under which the principal wants to incentivize concurrent working and training and conditions under which the agent...

This paper considers a firm's optimal investment in training and motivation measures in a hidden action agency problem. We study how these measures interact with each other and the contract in order to create value for the firm. Productivity enhancing training can be firm specific or non-firm...

This paper presents findings from a census of more than 79,000 stock-keeping units (SKUs) in 37 consumer packaged goods categories totaling $55 billion in annual revenue. It shows that, in 86% of product categories, the relationship between market share and retail distribution is increasing and...

This study is framed against the increasingly stringent environmental demands on the pulp and paper industry since the late-1980s to reduce water and air pollution, and the global economic slowdown of the early-1990s. The primary focus of this paper is an observation-based analysis conducted by...

The basis of competition in today’s marketplace is changing from one based on human labor, to one where the principle source of value creation is an organization’s knowledge, and the organization’s ability to rapidly acquire new knowledge through learning. The rise of the knowledge economy...