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作者：Prasad, Suraj
作者单位：University of New South Wales Sydney
摘要：I develop an agency model of job assignments where jobs differ based on the breadth of tasks. A tradeoff between task complementarities and relative abilities of workers results in those with balanced skills being assigned to multitask jobs. The same tradeoff between complementarities and relative abilities also influences incentives to sort privately informed workers to jobs. I then draw on a variety of sources (survey data, case studies, and anecdotal evidence) to suggest that relative abili...
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作者：Kumar, Praveen; Langberg, Nisan
作者单位：University of Houston System; University of Houston
摘要：Inefficient investment allocation induced by corporate fraud, where informed insiders strategically manipulate outside investors' beliefs, has been endemic historically and has recently attracted much attention. We reconcile corporate fraud and investment distortions with efficient capital markets, building on shareholder-manager agency conflicts and investment renegotiation in active takeover markets. Because investments that are ex post inefficient are not renegotiation proof, the optimal re...
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作者：Anderson, Simon P.; Renault, Regis
作者单位：University of Virginia; CY Cergy Paris Universite
摘要：Improved consumer information about horizontal aspects of products of similar quality leads to better consumer matching but also to higher prices, so consumer surplus can go up or down, while profits rise. With enough quality asymmetry, though, the higher-quality (and hence larger) firm's price falls with more information, so both effects benefit consumers. This occurs when comparative advertising is used against a large firm by a small one. Comparative advertising, as it imparts more informat...
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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...
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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 ...
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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...
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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...
