1,720,980 research outputs found
Virtual bridges and real business: The role of public actors in bridging online business social networks
No full textHOLD-UP AND EXTERNALITY: THE FIRM AS A NEXUS OF INCOMPLETE RIGHTS?
No full textThe Coasean theory of the firm (Coase in Economica 4:386–405, 1937) has flourished with the theory of incomplete contracts. Transaction costs in the form of enforcement costs have been deemed to be the main determinants of the decision to ‘make’ versus ‘buy’. Surprisingly, this stream of literature has almost neglected that transaction costs may also generate incomplete property rights (Coase in J Law Econ 3:1–44, 1960). As firm’s activities entail both contractual and property rights, these two domains interfere each other on the decision to carry out a transaction within the firm. When property rights are incomplete, potential externalities may increase the cost of using the price mechanism to procure the assets needed in a given transaction. The resulting ‘Coasean firm’ would not only centralize incomplete contracts under a unified governance system, but it will also aggregate incomplete property rights under a unified ownership structure
Hard labor in the lab: Deterrence, non-monetary sanctions, and severe procedures
Full text linkWe experimentally investigate two questions that must be understood to effectively implement important normative prescriptions of optimal deterrence theory: i) does a non-monetary punishment and a fine of equivalent monetary value produce the same level of deterrence, and ii) should severe procedures, which maximize correct convictions of guilty defendants, be preferred to lenient procedures, which minimize errors in cases against innocent defendants? We examine these questions in an experiment where potential thieves face the possibility of punishment. As a non-monetary sanction, we require convicted individuals to perform a tedious real effort task. In the monetary treatments, sanctions are instead fines, which are based on individuals' willingness to pay to avoid the real effort task to ensure comparability with the non-monetary treatment. The second manipulation in our experiment concerns the balance of errors in the adjudicative procedure (i.e. the conviction of innocents and acquittal of guilty individuals). We find that stealing is reduced most effectively by a sanction regime that combines non-monetary sanctions with a severe procedure. Our data are consistent with the notion that both monetary punishment and pro-defendant sanction regimes are less effective in communicating moral condemnation of an act
How Unjust! An Experimental Investigation of Supervisors’ Evaluation Errors and Agents’ Incentives
No full textIn our simple model the supervisor: i) cannot observe the agent’s effort; ii) aims at inducing
the agent to exert high effort; but iii) can only offer rewards based on performance. Since
performance is only stochastically related to effort, evaluation errors may occur. In particular,
deserving agents that have exerted high effort may not be rewarded (Type I errors) and
undeserving agents that have exerted low effort may be rewarded (Type II errors). We show
that, although the model predicts both errors to be equally detrimental to performance, this
prediction fails with a lab experiment. In fact, failing to reward deserving agents is
significantly more detrimental than rewarding undeserving agents. We discuss our result in
the light of some economic and managerial theories of behavior. Our result may have
interesting implications for strategic human resource management and personnel economics
and may also contribute to the debate about incentives and organizational performance
In Dubio Pro Reo. Behavioral explanations of pro-defendant bias in procedures
No full textThe standard model of optimal deterrence predicts that the probability of wrongful conviction of the innocent is, at the margin, as detrimental to deterrence as the wrongful acquittal of guilty individuals. We extend the model in several directions: using expected utility as well as non- expected utility to consider the role of risk aversion, non-linear probability weighting and loss aversion. We also consider how relevant emotions such as guilt, shame and indignation play out. Several of these factors support the intuition that wrongful convictions of the innocent do have a larger detrimental impact on deterrence and thus the policy implications are reconciled with the widely shared maxim in dubio pro reo. We then draw some theoretical implications such as a novel justification for the different standards of proof in criminal vs civil law as well as other policy implications
The case for the virtual strike
No full textStoppage strike, Virtual strike, Penal code, Labor law, D74, D78, J52, J83, K31, M55,
Reward Systems, Evaluation Errors And Motivation In The Principal-Agent Model
No full textA growing stream of research has been devoted to the assessment of the effectiveness of organizational reward systems in boosting employees' motivation. Elaborating on the reinforcement theory, in our work we challenge the view that evaluation errors hinder motivation, distinguishing between type I and type II errors. Through an experimental approach, we design treatments in order to test the hypotheses that different errors in the evaluation process have differential impacts on employees' motivation
Lo sciopero virtuale tra equivoci e illusionI
No full textNel febbraio 2009 il governo italiano ha approvato un disegno di legge per la regolamentazione e prevenzione dei conflitti collettivi di lavoro con riferimento alla libera circolazione delle persone. Una delle novità riguarda la disciplina dello sciopero virtuale. L’approccio seguito alla legge delega circa questa forma di sciopero sembra presentare tuttavia, alla luce dell’analisi economica degli incentivi, alcuni rile- vanti problemi
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