A large theoretical literature focuses on the question: What determines firms’ boundaries?Recently, Garicano and Santos and Holmstrom and Milgrom have proposed theories in whichfirms’ boundaries reflect the division of labor across individuals. This paper discussesstrategies for generating...

This paper presents a framework to analyze the potential changes in transaction costs due to theintroduction of e-commerce on transactions between businesses. It then illustrates and applies thisframework using internal data from an Internet-based firm to measure process improvements,marketplace...

This paper studies transaction costs changes arising from the introduction of the Internet in transactionsbetween firms. We divide transaction costs into coordination costs and motivation costs. We classifycoordination efficiencies into three categories: process improvements, marketplace...

Empirical studies on information communication technologies (ICT) typically aggregate the“information” and “communication” components together. We show theoretically and empirically thatthese have very different effects on the empowerment of employees, and by extension on wageinequality....

Hierarchies allow individuals to leverage their knowledge through others` time.This mechanism increases productivity and ampli…fies the impact of skill heterogeneity on earnings inequality. To quantify this effect, we analyze the earnings andorganization of U.S. lawyers and use an equilibrium...

Earnings inequality has increased substantially since the 1970s. Using evidence changes from con…dential Census data on U.S. law offices on lawyers'organization and earnings, we study the extent to which the mechanism suggested by Lucas (1978) and Rosen (1982), a scale of operations effect...

We exploit an incentive change in professional soccer leagues aimed at encouraging more attacking and goal scoring to obtain evidence on the effect ofstronger incentives on productive and destructive effort. Using as control thebehavior of the same teams in a competition that experienced no...