This paper develops an equilibrium job search model in which the employed worker privately accumulates human capital and continually searches for a better paying job. Firms encourage production and discourage turnover by rewarding with bonus payments and long service allowances, respectively,...

Results of multi-party bargaining are usually described by concepts from cooperative game theory, in particular by the core. In one-on-one matching, core allocations are stable in the sense that no pair of unmatched or otherwise matched players can improve their incomes by forming a match....

Without sacrificing tractability, we analyze the effect of fat-tailed events such as catastrophes on the optimal compensation contract between a principal and an agent. The optimal contract depends on all the moments and not just the variance

In two experiments, we examine the effects of employer reputation in an online labor market (Amazon Mechanical Turk) in which employers may decline to pay workers while keeping their work product. First, in an audit study of employers by a blinded worker, we find that working only for good...

This paper analyses bargaining over an incentive compatible contract in a moral hazard framework. We introduce the Kalai-Smorodinsky bargaining solution and compare the outcome with the commonly applied Nash solution. Whether worker's effort is higher in the Nash or the Kalai-Smorodinsky...

This paper studies the design of optimal contracts in dynamic environments where agents learn by doing. We derive a condition under which contracts are fully incentive compatible. A closed-form solution is obtained when agents have CARA utility. It shows that human capital accumulation...

I analyze how a firm should elicit advice from an expert on when to terminate a project with a stochastic lifespan. The firm cannot directly observe the project's lifespan, but imperfectly monitors its current state by observing incremental output. The expert directly observes the state of the...

We examine whether companies select compensation peer groups opportunistically to increase CEO pay. Using 608 firms from the Samp;P 1500, 2,154 peer firms identified from their proxy statements, and a pool of potential peers representing the firm's labor market in which it competes for talent,...

We study the impact of reputational incentives in markets characterized by moral hazard problems. Social preferences have been shown to enhance contract enforcement in these markets, while at the same time generating considerable wage and price rigidity. Reputation powerfully amplifies the...

Although stock options are commonly observed in chief executive officer (CEO) compensation contracts, there is theoretical controversy about whether stock options are part of the optimal contract. Using a sample of Fortune 500 companies, we solve an agency model calibrated to the...