-
作者：Patacconi, Andrea
作者单位：University of Oxford
摘要：This article studies hierarchical organizations where concerns for fast execution are important and employees must be coordinated to avoid wasteful duplications of effort. Simple conditions are provided for the time spent on coordinating subordinates to be increasing and the span of control to be decreasing as one goes up the hierarchy, with equalities holding if delay is all that matters. When returns to specialization are substantial, the span of control also tends to widen and the hierarchy...
-
作者：Chiu, Y. Stephen; Weng, Weiwei
作者单位：University of Hong Kong
摘要：We study a model of centralized admissions in which schools are allowed to pre-commit to admitting qualified applicants who rank them as their top choices over more qualified applicants who do not. A less popular school may use the pre-commitment to steal applicants who otherwise would not choose it as their top choice (the stealing motive); a popular school may use the pre-commitment to prevent its own applicants from being stolen (the preemptive motive). We identify the conditions for these ...
-
作者：Anderson, Simon P.; de Palma, Andre
作者单位：University of Virginia; Universite Paris Saclay
摘要：Unsolicited advertising messages vie for scarce attention. Junk mail, spam e-mail, and telemarketing calls need both parties to exert effort to generate transactions. Message receivers supply attention according to average message benefit, while the marginal sender determines congestion. Costlier transmission may improve average message benefit so more messages are examined. Too many (too few) messages may be sent, or the wrong ones. A Do-Not-Call policy beats a ban, but too many individuals o...
-
作者：Bessen, James; Maskin, Eric
作者单位：Boston University; Princeton University
摘要：We argue that when innovation is sequential (so that each successive invention builds in an essential way on its predecessors) and complementary (so that each potential innovator takes a different research line), patent protection is not as useful for encouraging innovation as in a static setting. Indeed, society and even inventors themselves may be better off without such protection. Furthermore, an inventor's prospective profit may actually be enhanced by competition and imitation. Our seque...
-
作者：Deneckere, Raymond; Liang, Meng-Yu
作者单位：University of Wisconsin System; University of Wisconsin Madison; Academia Sinica - Taiwan
摘要：This article considers a market served by a monopolist who sells a durable good that depreciates stochastically over time. We show that there exist three types of stationary equilibria: a Coase Conjecture equilibrium, a monopoly equilibrium, and a reputational equilibrium. When the depreciation rate is low, the Coase Conjecture equilibrium is the unique equilibrium. For intermediate values of the depreciation rate, all three equilibrium types coexist. When the depreciation rate is high, the mo...
-
作者：Daughety, Andrew F.; Reinganum, Jennifer F.
作者单位：Vanderbilt University
摘要：Firms communicate product quality to consumers through a variety of channels. Economic models of such communication take two alternative forms when quality is exogenous: (i) disclosure of quality through a credible direct claim; or (ii) signalling of quality via producer actions that influence buyers' beliefs about quality. In general, these two literatures have ignored one another. We argue that firms should be viewed as choosing which means of communication they will employ. We show that int...
-
作者：Raith, Michael
作者单位：University of Rochester
摘要：I examine optimal incentives and performance measurement in a model where an agent has specific knowledge (in the sense of Jensen and Meckling) about the consequences of his actions for the principal. Contracts can be based both on input measures related to the agent's actions and an output measure related to the principal's payoff. Whereas input-based pay minimizes income risk, only output-based pay encourages the agent to use his knowledge efficiently. In general, it is optimal to use both k...
-
作者：Sharma, Rajiv; Stano, Miron; Gehring, Renu
作者单位：Portland State University; Oakland University
摘要：We analyze admission and discharge decisions when hospitals become capacity constrained on high-demand days, and develop a test for discrimination that, under certain circumstances, does not require controls for differences across patient groups. On high-demand days, patients are discharged earlier than expected compared to those discharged on low-demand days. High demand creates no statistically significant differences in hospitals' admission behavior. Thus, hospitals appear to ration capacit...
-
作者：Auriol, Emmanuelle; Renault, Regis
作者单位：Universite de Toulouse; Universite Toulouse 1 Capitole; Toulouse School of Economics; Institut Universitaire de France
摘要：This article introduces status as reflecting an agent's claim to recognition in her work. This is a scarce resource: increasing an agent's status requires that another agent's status be decreased. Higher-status agents are more willing to exert effort in exchange for money; better-paid agents would exert higher effort in exchange for improved status. The results are consistent with actual management practices: (i) egalitarianism is desirable in a static context; (ii) in a long-term work relatio...
-
作者：Al-Najjar, Nabil; Baliga, Sandeep; Besanko, David
作者单位：Northwestern University
摘要：Psychological and experimental evidence, as well as a wealth of anecdotal examples, suggests that firms may confound fixed, sunk, and variable costs, leading to distorted pricing decisions. This article investigates the extent to which market forces and learning eventually eliminate these distortions. We envision firms that experiment with cost methodologies that are consistent with real-world accounting practices, including ones that confuse the relevance of variable, fixed, and sunk costs to...
