Incentive provision is a central question in modern economic theory. During the run up to the financial crisis, many banks attempted to encourage loan underwriting by giving out incentive packages to loan officers. Using a unique data set on small business loan officer compensation from a major...

Brazil has made remarkable progress in reducing poverty and inequality. This reduction is explained by strong growth but also by effective social policies. Besides growth, public services and cash transfers have played the biggest role, the latter notably through the successful “Bolsa...

Joan Robinson first suggested that the labor supply curve for a firm may be upward sloping with a finite wage elasticity. Recently, a rapidly growing volume of microeconomics studies have found empirical support for Robinson's suggestion. In this paper it is shown that if a firm's wage...

Perfect competition implies stage two production for labor, where increased employment lowers productivity and decreased employment increases productivity. In contrast, empirical studies of individual firms and macroeconomic studies of the business cycle have document pro-cyclical productivity....

A feature of last decade’s mortgage crisis was that the credit risk of borrowers was not accurately priced into their mortgages. For example, the increased risk of delinquency was not associated with a higher interest rate. I confirm this belief by using a measure of earnings risk, a major...