Murray Rothbard developed the concept of decision-making rent as a return to a kind of unhirable labor performed by the entrepreneur in his role as owner and ultimate decision-maker of the firm. Rothbard conceived owner's rent as separate from profit and loss and the decision-making function as...

In many low- and middle-income countries most micro and small enterprises (MSEs) struggle to upgrade into medium-sized and large enterprises. An extensive literature offers manifold explanations for the phenomenon but no conclusive answer on what the most important factors for MSE upgrading are:...

Uncertainty over economic policy plays a key role in economic outcomes. But evidence and quantification for emerging markets are elusive because of measurement and reverse causality issues. In this paper, we construct a news-based economic policy uncertainty (EPU) index for Turkey and assess how...

We study whether group identity mitigates inefficiencies associated with appropriable quasi-rents, which are often created by relationship-specific investments in bilateral trade relationships. We conjecture that group identity strengthens the effect of an agent's generous action in increasing...

This paper studies Chile's 2009 Equal Pay for Equal Work law and its impact on manufacturing plant behavior. Using the difference-in-discontinuities design to exploit the law's quasi-experimental properties, I find that large plants with disclosure requirements and substantially higher penalties...

We study information disclosure and diversification in contests with technological uncertainty, where agents can pursue different technologies to compete in the contest, but there is uncertainty regarding which will be implemented ex post. The principal can credibly reveal some information about...

Context: Despite governmental and international failures, concession firms in Liberia helped to prevent Ebola during the 2014-2015 epidemic. This essay explains the conditions under which these firms responded to the epidemic and helped to mitigate its spread. Focus is placed on the extent to...

The problem of managerial agency costs dominates debates in corporate law. Many leading scholars advocate reforms that would reduce agency costs by forcing firms to allocate more control to shareholders. Such proposals disregard the costs that shareholders avoid by delegating control to managers...

Open data are held to contribute to a wide variety of social and political goals, including strengthening transparency, public participation and democratic accountability, promoting economic growth and innovation, and enabling greater public sector efficiency and cost savings. However, releasing...

This paper discusses the regulation of mass metadata surveillance in Europe through the lens of the landmark judgment in which the Court of Justice of the European Union struck down the Data Retention Directive. The controversial directive obliged telecom and Internet access providers in Europe...