Human tasks are often multidimensional. Holmstrom and Milgrom (1991) concluded that ghigh-poweredh incentives cannot work unless all dimensions of these tasks are observable in the firm. However, as this study shows, if the firm can observe the price vector of its products in the market,...

Many human tasks are multidimensional. Hence Holmstrom and Milgrom (1991) concluded that a ghigh-poweredh incentive cannot work unless all dimensions of the task are observable in the firm. However, as this study shows, if the firm can observe the price vector of its product in the market,...

Rosenstein-Rodan (1943) and others posit that rapid development requires a 'big push' - the coordinated rapid growth of diverse complementary industries, and suggests a role for government in providing such coordination. We argue that Japan's zaibatsu, or pyramidal business groups, provided this...

Capital stock in residential structures, as well as the distribution of its appropriation and ownership among families are fundamental determinants of the wealth, welfare and productivity of the economy. As part of a broad project on the stock of capital of the Brazilian economy in the 20th...

Capital stock in residential structures, as well as the distribution of its appropriation and ownership among families are fundamental determinants of the wealth, welfare and productivity of the economy. As part of a broad project on the stock of capital of the Brazilian economy in the 20th...

The paper analyzes how the choice of organizational structure leads to the best compromise between controlling behavior based on authority rights and minimizing costs for implementing high efforts. Concentrated delegation and hierarchical delegation turn out to be never an optimal compromise. If...

Do contractual institutions and a country's level of trust interact in their impact on the international make-or-buy decision? By analyzing explicit and implicit contracting in a unified framework, I show that better formal contractibility may both facilitate and hinder relational contracting on...

Informal long-term relationships and mutual confidence play a crucial role in modern economies in at least two dimensions. First, the performance of firms is strongly affected by their capacity to solve organizational questions effectively and this capacity is apparently strongly related to...

In Germany exist a large number of co-operatives that are engaged in a broad variety of business activities. Their organisational structure is determined by co-operative law and to a lesser degree by statutes or by-laws. As has been shown for German rural co-operatives by applying property...

This paper views authority as the right to undertake decisions that impose externalities on other members of the organization. When only decision rights can be contractually assigned to one of the organization's stakeholders, the optimal assignment minimizes the resulting inefficiencies by...