The paper asserts that introducing endogenous outside options in the standard incomplete contract framework might reverse some of the main conclusions on incomplete contracts enforcement and on the nature of the firm drawn by the New Institutional Economists. In particular, the explanations of...

This research presents evidence on how the impact of industry concentration and unionism affect the Portuguese wage levels. The influence of employer association is also considered. We use sector information - two-digit level disaggregation of "Classificação das Actividades Económicas" -, and...

Tenancy has been a means for labor to advance their socio-economic condition in agriculture yet in Brazil and Latin America, tenancy rates are low compared to the U.S. and the OECD countries. We test for the importance of insecure property rights in Brazil on the reluctance of landowners to rent...

This paper incorporates the interdisciplinary New Institutional and Transaction Costs Economics (combining Economics, Organization, Law, Sociology, Behavioral and Political Sciences) and suggests a holistic framework for analysis of agrarian contracts. First, it specifies type and importance of...

A theoretical economic model is developed to explain the disparities in flexible work scheduling observed across firms, workplaces, sectors, and time periods. Given heterogeneity in firms’ costs, the supply of flextime is determined by firms’ costs of enacting versus not adopting it. The...

Ubiquitous computing means network connectivity everywhere, linking devices and systems as small as a thumb tack and as large as a worldwide product distribution chain. What could happen when people are so readily networked? This short essay explores issues arising from two possible emerging...

Recent scholarship has begun to assess the role of intellectual property rights in the theory of the Coasean firm. Some of this scholarship has looked at the effects of intellectual property on decisions to "make or buy" inputs to production. Other scholarship has looked at the effects of...

This paper links the quality (i.e. noise and bias) of information available for production decisions and performance evaluation to the choice of whether or not production should occur in teams. The information system provides agents with access to an early but imprecise signal about productivity...

The incidence of flexible daily work scheduling among workers presumably reflects employers' offering it formally as an organizational productivity-enhancing tool or less formally as a job amenity and/or discretionary employee benefit. Recent US CPS data distinguish whether a worker's flexible...

Knowledge-based theorists have developed two primary arguments to explain the existence of firms: one based on avoiding knowledge transfer and the other based on facilitating knowledge transfer. These arguments are not only contradictory, but also fail to predict when hierarchies supplant...