Through Voltaire’s novella Candide, this essay examines the differences between a scientific and a religious mindset and the consequences of poor decision-making when a political leader has a religious mindset that he misapplies to fundamentally scientific questions. By analyzing various...

We examine a principal-agent model with moral hazard in which the technology – the vector of probability distributions from the agent’s actions to the possible outcomes – is initially unknown. A signal correlated with the technology is observed after the principal and agent agree to the...

In this paper, we are interested in the impact a Major League Baseball (MLB) manager has on a team’s outcome. Using data on manager’s contracts, team performance, and team and manager characteristics, first, we determine the variables that determine a manager's salary. Then, we use a...