Publications

27 Mar 2014
Video

The Learning Contract

Article

Wage-Employment Contracts

By: Jerry R. Green and Charles M. Kahn

This paper studies the efficient agreements about the dependence of workers' earnings on employment, when the employment level is controlled by firms. The firms' superior information about profitability conditions is responsible for this form of contract governance.... View Details

Keywords: Labor; Wages; Contracts

2025
Working Paper

Private Equity and Workers: Modeling and Measuring Monopsony, Implicit Contracts, and Efficient Reallocation

By: Kyle Herkenhoff, Josh Lerner, Gordon M. Phillips, Francisca Rebelo and Benjamin Sampson

We measure the real effects of private equity buyouts on worker outcomes by building a new database that links transactions to matched employer-employee data in the United States. To guide our empirical analysis, we derive testable implications from three theories in... View Details

Keywords: Monopsony; Market Power; Productivity; Private Equity; Employment; Wages; Employees

April–May 2021
Article

Labor Mobility and Antitakeover Provisions

By: Aiyesha Dey and Joshua White

How do firms protect their human capital? We test whether firms facing an increased threat of being acquired strengthen their antitakeover provisions (ATPs) in order to bond with their employees. We use the adoption of the Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine (IDD) by U.S.... View Details

Keywords: Labor Mobility; Antitakeover Provisions; Trade Secrets; Implicit Contracting; Employee Bonding; Corporate Governance; Acquisition; Human Capital; Strategy; Innovation and Invention; Intellectual Property; Safety

Article

Trust and Incentives in Agency

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Daniel F Spulber

Contracts between a principal and an agent are not formed in a vacuum. Although formal contracts between a principal and an agent contain explicit incentives for performance, the relationship between a principal and an agent also involves implicit incentives. Three... View Details

Keywords: Trust; Motivation and Incentives; Agency Theory; Contracts; Market Transactions; Performance; Relationships; Societal Protocols; Legal Liability; Cost

September 1992 (Revised August 2010)
Case

The Carried Interest

By: Henry B. Reiling

Makes the point that general partners and others frequently contract to receive a share of any profits that the venture they manage generates. This practice raises the question of whether the value of this contract right should be taxed when it is received or only when... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Cash Flow; Profit Sharing; Taxation; Contracts; Business or Company Management; Partners and Partnerships

19 Mar 2014
Working Paper Summaries

The Use of Broker Votes to Reward Brokerage Firms’ and Their Analysts’ Research Activities

Keywords: by David A. Maber, Boris Groysberg & Paul M. Healy; Financial Services

Research Summary

Dissertation Summary

From a contractual viewpoint, the employment relations observed in the early 1960s in large unionized manufacturing firms in the U.S. and Japan represented two contrasting cases. Employment relations in the U.S. were based largely on explicit, elaborate, and... View Details

14 Apr 2003
Research & Ideas

Pay-for-Performance Doesn’t Always Pay Off

Amabile, contend that pay-for-performance can cast a pall over self-esteem, teamwork, and creativity, Beer and Cannon wrote. I think there is an implicit negotiation going on between what management wants and expects, and what employees... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

October 2008
Article

It's Time to Make Management a True Profession

By: Nitin Nohria and Rakesh Khurana

In the face of the recent institutional breakdown of trust in business, managers are losing legitimacy. To regain public trust, management needs to become a true profession in much the way medicine and law have, argue Khurana and Nohria of Harvard Business School. True... View Details

Keywords: Competency and Skills; Education; Ethics; Corporate Accountability; Management; Trust; Value Creation

2010
Working Paper

Agency Revisited

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Daniel F. Spulber

The article presents a comprehensive overview of the principal-agent model that emphasizes the role of trust in the agency relationship. The analysis demonstrates that the legal remedy for breach of duty can result in a full-information efficient outcome eliminating... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Contracts; Agency Theory; Mathematical Methods; Behavior; Trust

16 Dec 2008
First Look

First Look: December 16, 2008

Working PapersSilent Saboteurs: How Implicit Theories of Voice Inhibit the Upward Flow of Knowledge in Organizations Authors:James R. Detert and Amy C. Edmondson Abstract This article examines, in a series of three studies, how people... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Fall 2024
Article

Redemption Mechanisms in Poison Pills: Evidence on Pill Design and Law Firm Effects

By: Olivier Baum and Guhan Subramanian

We present the first evidence on the incidence of “trip wire” versus “last look” poison pills. Using a hand-collected data set of 130 poison pills implemented and/or amended between January 1, 2020 and March 31, 2023, we find that pills are almost evenly divided... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Negotiation Tactics; Contracts

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