Essays on Contract Design and Incentive Provision

Essays on Contract Design and Incentive Provision
Author: Eva I. Hoppe-Fischer
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2019-02-19
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3658241330

Contract theory, which emphasizes the importance of unverifiable actions and private information, has been a highly active field of research in microeconomics in the last decades. This thesis is divided into two parts. Part I consists of three chapters that study contract-theoretic models which are motivated by the classic procurement problem of a principal who wants an agent to deliver a certain good or service. In such models it is typically assumed that decision makers are interested in their own monetary payoffs only. Moreover, they have unlimited cognitive abilities and behave in a perfectly rational way. Yet, in practice people often do not behave this way. While empirical research is very difficult in contract theory, laboratory experiments have recently turned out to be an important source of data. In Part II, three experimental studies are presented that investigate contract-theoretic problems brought up in Part I.

Equality, Moral Incentives, and the Market

Equality, Moral Incentives, and the Market
Author: Joseph H. Carens
Publisher: Joseph H. Carens
Total Pages: 268
Release: 1981-01-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0226092690

The book argues that by relying on moral incentives it is possible, in principle, to separate the organizational advantages of the market from its distributional disadvantages. In theory, we can imagine a politico-economic system that distributes income equally (or on some other principle) but has all the efficiency characteristics of a capitalist market system. This shows that the market can provide an institutional mechanism for realizing ideals of distributive justice. The book provides a theoretical model of the system, identifying its requirements. It then offers arguments from empirical social science about why the model should work under appropriate conditions.

Innovation and Public Policy

Innovation and Public Policy
Author: Austan Goolsbee
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2022-03-25
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 022680545X

A calculation of the social returns to innovation /Benjamin F. Jones and Lawrence H. Summers --Innovation and human capital policy /John Van Reenen --Immigration policy levers for US innovation and start-ups /Sari Pekkala Kerr and William R. Kerr --Scientific grant funding /Pierre Azoulay and Danielle Li --Tax policy for innovation /Bronwyn H. Hall --Taxation and innovation: what do we know? /Ufuk Akcigit and Stefanie Stantcheva --Government incentives for entrepreneurship /Josh Lerner.

Designing Economic Mechanisms

Designing Economic Mechanisms
Author: Leonid Hurwicz
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2006-05-22
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 113945434X

A mechanism is a mathematical structure that models institutions through which economic activity is guided and coordinated. There are many such institutions; markets are the most familiar ones. Lawmakers, administrators and officers of private companies create institutions in order to achieve desired goals. They seek to do so in ways that economize on the resources needed to operate the institutions, and that provide incentives that induce the required behaviors. This book presents systematic procedures for designing mechanisms that achieve specified performance, and economize on the resources required to operate the mechanism. The systematic design procedures are algorithms for designing informationally efficient mechanisms. Most of the book deals with these procedures of design. When there are finitely many environments to be dealt with, and there is a Nash-implementing mechanism, our algorithms can be used to make that mechanism into an informationally efficient one. Informationally efficient dominant strategy implementation is also studied.

Essays in Accounting Theory in Honour of Joel S. Demski

Essays in Accounting Theory in Honour of Joel S. Demski
Author: Rick Antle
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2007-02-15
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0387303995

The integration of accounting and the economics of information developed by Joel S. Demski and those he inspired has revolutionized accounting thought. This volume collects papers on accounting theory in honor of Professor Demski. The book also contains an extensive review of Professor Demski’s own contributions to the theory of accounting over the past four decades.