Abstract: To boost employees’ performance, firms often offer monetary bonuses when production goals are reached. However, the evidence suggests that the particular level of a goal is critical to the effectiveness of this practice. Goals must be challenging yet achievable. Computing optimal...

This paper examines the relationship between competition, innovation and productivity for the Netherlands. We use industry level data aggregated from micro data as well as moments from firm level data for the period 1996-2006. We match innovation data from Community Innovation Survey with...

This paper examines the role for tax policies in productivity-shock driven economies with \catching-up-with-the-Joneses" utility functions.The optimal tax policy is shown to a ect the economy countercyclically via procyclical taxes, i.e., \cooling down" the economy with higher taxes when it is...

This study investigates the impact of corporate governance and product market competition on total factor productivity growth in Germany and the UK.For Germany, the prototype of a bank-based governance system, productivity grows faster in firms controlled by financial institutions (in...

As becomes apparent from the standard text books in industrial organization (cf.Tirole, 1988, The Theory of Industrial Organization), the analysis of the e.ects of uncertainty within this field is yet underdeveloped.This paper shows that the new theory of strategic real options can be used to...

The paper focuses on labor and product market deregulations, as fundamental elements in the passage from an investment to an innovation-based economy.The approach undertaken is prominently empirical.After a very brief description of the regulatory levels on the two sides of the Atlantic, we take...

Debreu s coefficient of resource utilization is freed from individual data requirements.The procedure is shown to be equivalent to the imposition of Leontief preferences.The rate of growth of the modified Debreu coefficient and the Solow residual are shown to add up to TFP growth.This...