We develop a model of sluggish firm entry to explain short-run labor responses to technology shocks. We show that the labor response to technology and its persistence depend on the degree of returns to labor and the rate of firm entry. Existing empirical results support our theory based on...

Slow firm entry over the business cycle causes measured TFP to vary endogenously because incumbent firms bear shocks. Our main theorem states that imperfect competition and dynamic firm entry are necessary and sufficient conditions for these endogenous productivity fluctuations. The result...

Rank-order tournaments are usually modeled simultaneously. However, real tournaments are often sequential. We show that agents’ strategic behavior in sequential-move tournaments significantly differ from the one in simultaneous-move tournaments: In a sequential-move tournament with...

We characterize the unique Markov perfect equilibrium of a tug-of-war without exogenous noise, in which players have the opportunity to engage in a sequence of battles in an attempt to win the war. Each battle is an all-pay auction in which the player expending the greater resources wins. In...

This article analyzes the effects of intellectual property rights in a qualityladder model in which incumbent firms preemptively innovate in order to keep their position of leadership. Unlike in models with leapfrogging, granting nonexpiring forward protection reduces the rate of innovation and...