Organizational decisions in multistage production processes are often not made by the downstream headquarter firm, but by the various intermediate inputs suppliers along the value chain themselves. We assume a production process with one headquarter (final good producer) and two suppliers at...

How can a manager influence workers' activity while knowing little about it? This paper examines a situation where production requires several tasks, and the manager wants to direct production to achieve a preferred allocation of effort across tasks. However, the effort that is required for each...

This study investigates induced productivity effects of firms introducing new environmental technologies. The literature on within-firm organisational change and productivity suggests that firms can achieve higher productivity gains from adopting new technologies if they adapt their...

We combine the traditions of Coase and Adam Smith to look for the most efficient mechanisms in situations where buyers need sequences of human asset services, but only know their sequence one step ahead. The environment has two critical features: (a) multilateral matching allows gains from...

This article compares the relationship between patent quality and patent value in discrete and cumulative innovation. Using factor analysis and a set of various commonly used patent quality indicators including claims, citations and family size, we build a quality factor jointly driving all...