In this paper, a formal rent-seeking theory of the firm is developed. The main idea is that integration (compared to non-integration) facilitates rent-seeking for the integrating party, but makes it harder for the integrated one. In a one-period model, this implies that the rent-seeking contest...

In the fresh produce long distance international trade, market intermediaries are still a key actor while modern retailers have little backward integrated into the import activity. Difficulty to negotiate a price at the FOB level, three or four weeks before fresh produce are consumed, leads...

We study differently framed incentives in dynamic laboratory buyerseller relationships with multi-tasking and endogenous matching. The experimental design tries to mitigate the role of social preferences and intrinsic motivation. Absent explicit incentives, effort is low in both tasks. Their...

We study differently framed incentives in dynamic laboratory buyer-seller relationships with multi-tasking and endogenous matching. The experimental design tries to mitigate the role of social preferences and intrinsic motivation. Absent explicit incentives, effort is low in both tasks. Their...

Globalization – improved access to integrated, anonymous markets – is claimed to crowd out cooperative relations: from reciprocal exchange to lifetime employment, from relational governance to corruption/collusion. We study how agents’ intertemporal preferences and their access to markets...

Why does individual performance pay seem to prevail in human-capital-intensive industries where teamwork is so common? We present a model that aims to explain this. In a repeated game model of relational contracting, we analyze the conditions for implementing peerdependent incentive regimes when...

We analyze a situation where common noise makes compensation based on relative performance evaluation (RPE) desirable, but where the agents' ability to hold-up values ex post obstruct the implementation of optimal RPE schemes. The principal can take actions to constrain the agents' hold-up power...

Standard models of promotion tournaments assume that firms can commit to arbitrary tournament prizes. In this paper, a firm's ability to adjust tournament prizes is constrained by the outside labor market, through the wages other firms are willing to offer to the promoted and unpromoted workers....

We show that when the researcher’s (observable but not contractible) contribution to innovation is crucial, a covenant not to compete (CNC) reduces effort and profits under both spot and relational contracts. Having no CNC allows the researcher to leave for a rival. This alleviates a...

This paper provides a theoretical rationale for non-binding retail price recommendations (RPRs) in vertical supply relations. Analyzing a bilateral manufacturer-retailer relationship with repeated trade, we show that linear relational contracts can implement the surplusmaximizing outcome. If the...