We study the effects of envy on the feasibility of relational contracts in a standard moral hazard setup with two agents. Performance is evaluated via an observable, but non-contractible signal which reflects the agent's individual contribution to form value. Both agents exhibit disadvantageous...

With adverse selection, diseconomies of scale associated with hierarchies may induce the implementation of a second-best technology. This occurs whenever rents to lower tiers of the hierarchy increase faster than total surplus. This is more likely with longer hierarchies.

The current study investigates a tripartite incentive contract between an innovator supplying an intellectual asset, a professional assigned to productive tasks, and a consulting firm specializing in matching ideas and professionalskills. A rather simple pure tripartite partnership implements...

In this paper, we provide an outlook for further research on the topic of governance. We review four different approaches on the theory of the firm and discuss implications for governance, namely; nexus of contracts / agency theory, property rights /incomplete contracts, adaptation, and nexus of...

We use a static framework characterized by both moral hazard and holdup problems. In the model the optimal allocation of bargaining power balances these frictions. We examine the impact of improved monitoring on that optimal allocation and its impact upon effort, investment, profits and rents....

We compare the effect of legal and institutional competition for the design of labor institutions in an environment characterized by holdup problems in human and physical capital. We compare autarky with the two country case, assuming that capital is perfectly mobile and labor immobile. We...

The uniqueness of bounded local equilibria under interest rate rules is analyzed in a model with sticky information à la Mankiw and Reis (2002). The main results are tighter bounds on monetary policy than in sticky-price models, irrelevance ofthe degree of output-gap targeting for determinacy,...

We introduce a Nelson-Siegel type interest rate term structure model with the underlying yield factors following autoregressive processes revealing time-varying stochastic volatility. The factor volatilities capture risk inherent to the term structure and are associated with the time-varying...

We present a new way to model age-specific demographic variables with the example of age-specific mortality in the U.S., building on the Lee-Carter approach and extendingit in several dimensions. We incorporate covariates and model their dynamics jointly with the latent variables underlying...

Motivated by the recurrent Neural Networks, this paper proposes a recurrent Support Vector Regression (SVR) procedure to forecast nonlinear ARMA model based simulated data and real data of financial returns. The forecasting ability of the recurrent SVR is compared with three competing methods,...