We document a secular shift from IPOs to acquisitions of venture capital-backed startups and show that this trend is accompanied by an increase in the opportunity cost of going public over the last quarter century. Dominant companies that are disproportionately active in the corporate control...

We study two sources of delay in teams: freeriding and lack of communication. Partners contribute to the value of a common project, but have private information about the success of their own efforts. When the deadline is far away, unsuccessful partners freeride on each others' efforts. When the...

Consumer search is not only costly but also tiring. We characterize the intertemporal effects that search fatigue has on oligopoly prices, product proliferation, and the provision of consumer assistance (i.e., advice). These effects vary based on whether search is all-or-nothing or sequential in...

In this paper we show that subtle forms of deceit undermine the effectiveness of incentives. We design an experiment in which the principal has an interest in underreporting the true performance difference between the agents in a dynamic tournament. According to the standard approach, rational...

Contract Theory by Patrick Bolton and Mathias Dewatripont, a comprehensive textbook on contract theory suitable for use at the graduate and advanced undergraduate levels, covers the areas of agency theory, information economics, and organization theory and presents many applications in all areas...

This paper argues that the prevalence of compensation systems which reward winners without explicitly identifying losers can be rationalized by workers` concern for relative payoffs. If the workers` participation constraints are binding, the firm must compensate its employees for the disutility...