In this paper we develop an asymmetric information model that provides a rationale for the existence of pay-for-performance contracts in the absence of incentive for effort and explains when and in which occupations pay-for-performance is more likely to be observed. In our model competition...

In this paper a model based on conflicts of interest between shareholders, the CEO and divisional managers is developed to explain why corporate diversification is good for some firms and bad for others. It is shown that when the decision to diversify is endogenous, whether diversification...

This paper studies firm-provided training in the presence of the following labor market policies: minimum wages, unemployment benefits, firing costs, and severance payments. I show that in high minimum wage economies, a more intense use of labor market policies reduces firm-provide training,...

We present a static general equilibrium model of an economy with agents with heterogenous wealth and endogenous credit constraints due to moral hazard. Credit constraints give rise to inefficiencies which are larger if wealth is distributed more unequally. We show that increases in the loan...

The present paper proposes a simple model for studying the interplay between self-enforcing cooperation and network formation. In particular, the model provides an answer to the ancient question of how cooperative behavior emerges in different communities and how the possibility of behaving...

In this paper a simple model of mergers in which synergies, private benefits and CEO power play a crucial role is proposed. A merger is modeled as a bargaining process between the acquiring and target board with the gains from a merger divided according to Rubinstein’s alternating-offer game...

In this paper I show that, contrary to Becker's (1962) Human Capital theory and consistent with the evidence, in a frictionless labor market model firms pay for general training, while the worker recives the full return on general training, and the worker and the firm share the returns on...

This paper provides a simple theoretical framework based on a new type of human capital introduced by Gibbons and Waldman (2004), called task-specific training, to understand job design. Mainly, in the presence of task-specific training, promotions might result ex-post in the underutilization of...

In this paper we consider a market situation in which initially there is an unintegrated monopoly upstream that owns an important facility and two dowstream firms. Then the market is liberalized allowing upstream entry and vertical integration. The equilibrium entry mode–sharing the incumbent...

Asymmetric-price adjustment is a common phenomenon in many markets around the world, particularly in retail gasoline markets. This paper studies the existence of this phenomenon in the retail gasoline market in the city of Santiago, Chile, using a data set of weekly gas station prices that...