The following is a brief summary of a working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research on the effects of bonus-pay schemes in firms where workers’ output is judged on multiple dimensions including quality. Principal-agent relations present an omnipresent feature to modern economies. The fundamental issue is that the worker (the agent) hasContinue reading “Summary: Testing The Theory of Multitasking: Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment in Chinese Factories (Hong)”
Category Archives: Articles
Summary: Race, Tenure and Resource Allocation in Southern Agriculture, 1910 (Higgs)
“We have inherited from the literature on the post-bellum South the image of a society ruled by force and violence, divided by racism and class distinctions, immobilized by ignorance and agrarian traditions. There is, of course, a large element of truth in all this. But too often this image has paralyzed critical thought, especially aboutContinue reading “Summary: Race, Tenure and Resource Allocation in Southern Agriculture, 1910 (Higgs)”
Summary: Do Agents Game Their Agents’ Behavior? Evidence from Sales Managers (Benson)
The Firm, the Managers and the Employees – Do their interests align? Allen Benson examines how sales managers game the staffing and incentives of their subordinates and looks at the imperfect ability of organizational hierarchies to motivate employees to act on the organization’s behalf. The study examines data in 244 firms provided by on-demand (cloud)Continue reading “Summary: Do Agents Game Their Agents’ Behavior? Evidence from Sales Managers (Benson)”
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