The paper reviews and discusses the literature on the concept of incentive in management; the visions of ancient Greek philosophers, classical economists, scientific management, agency theory, contracts, property theory and transaction costs theory. The discussion shows that the transaction...

I show that cutting the flow of information between a principal and an agent can increase the power of the incentives of the agent to reveal private information. (JEL: D23, D82, D86, L20) (c) 2010 by the European Economic Association.

Why do some individuals pirate digital music while others pay for it? Using data on a sample of undergraduate students, we study the determinants of music piracy by looking at whether a respondent’s last song was obtained illegally or not. In doing so, we incorporate (i) the...

We develop a monopolistically competitive model for a closed economy without contract incompleteness. We show that if superior technology is not allowed to be transferred, integration would be the best mode of organization given that the transaction cost of intermediate input is sufficiently...

Besley and Ghatak (2001) show that public good should be owned by the agent who values the public good most — irrespective of technological factors. In this paper we relax their assumptions in a natural way by allowing the agents to be indispensable and show that relative valuations are not...

En este documento se analiza la reciente disminución de las exportaciones a Venezuela y su impacto en el panorama exportador y las firmas colombianas. Al mismo tiempo se plantean algunas reflexiones sobre la sustitución del mercado venezolano. Para esto se utilizó la base de comercio exterior...

The effects of capital destruction are endogenized in a neoclassical growth model where the economy can optimally allocate part of its labor force to defend capital from being destroyed. The purpose is to explain the optimal allocation of the labor force between productive and deterrence...

Transaction costs play a key role in the behaviour of smallholders in developing countries. We exploit the introduction of an additional tobacco auction floor in Malawi to investigate the impact of a reduction in transaction costs and improved market access on production per hectare and the...

Employees' incentive to invest in their task proficiency depends on the likelihood that they will execute the same tasks in the future. Changes in tasks can be warranted as a result of technological progress and changes in firm strategy as well as from fine-tuning job design and from monitoring...

This discussion paper resulted in a publication in <A href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10645-005-2933-4">'De Economist'</A>, 2005, 153(2), 139-165.<P> How much does a nation spend on resources to 'grease the wheels of trade'? To examine this question the Dutch economy is used as an exemplary case as the Netherlands are known as a nation of traders. This...</p></a>