This paper develops a novel field experiment to test the implicit prediction of tournament theory that competition increases work time and can therefore contribute to the long work hours required in elite occupations. A majority of workers in the treatment without explicit financial incentives...

As an industry that thrives on - rather than succumbs to - adversity, the couture corporate world demands innovation and encourages risks. When combined with successful marketing and savvy business practices, these risks can result in large payoffs, which exist, primarily, due to the nature of...

We examine how CEO compensation is affected by the presence of busy and overlap directors. We find that CEOs at firms with more busy directors receive greater total pay, fixed-salary and equity-linked pay and exhibit higher pay-performance (delta) and pay-risk (vega) sensitivities. Our results...

Explicit relative performance awards (RPE) have become an important component of executive compensation. We calculate the value and incentives of explicit RPE awards and find that RPE awards that use a custom peer group are structured both in terms of the peer group and payout design to filter...

In recent years, scholars and policymakers have devoted considerable attention to the potential consequences of employment noncompetition agreements and to whether legislatures ought to reform the laws that govern the enforcement of these controversial contractual provisions. Unfortunately, much...

This paper develops a novel field experiment to test the implicit prediction of tournament theory that competition increases work time and can therefore contribute to the long work hours required in elite occupations. A majority of workers in the treatment without explicit financial incentives...

We analyze optimal labor contracts when workers are inequity averse towards the employer. Welfare is maximized for an equal sharing rule of surplus between the worker and the firm. That is, profit sharing is optimal even if effort is contractible. If the firm can make a take-it-or leave-it...

We introduce a general single-agent single-period incentive model that is applicable to a broad-spectrum of situations. Agent's hidden actions contribute to the firm's profits, which is not measurable in general. However, there are measurable outcomes, which stochastically depend on the agent's...

Are monetary and non-monetary incentives used as substitutes in motivating effort? I address this question in a laboratory experiment in which the choice of the job characteristics (i.e., the mission) is part of the compensation package that principals can use to influence agents' effort....

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...