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Superb Posner – but can we go further?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2010

BRUNO S. FREY
BRUNO S. FREY*
Affiliation:
University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
*
*Email: bsfrey@iew.uzh.ch.
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Abstract:

Posner's (2010) analysis offers many exciting insights into the principal-agent problem, particularly with respect to the secret service. I argue that it would be useful to consider a broader model of human behaviour, which includes awards as extrinsic incentives beyond pay, as well as intrinsic motivation. A more comparative stance that goes beyond the United States would be a useful check of how general the results are. Scholars should not forget that while the US is the dominant economy today, there are 195 nations in the world that offer many fascinating institutional variations, which are useful to take into account.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Institutional Economics , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , March 2010 , pp. 65 - 69
Copyright
Copyright © The JOIE Foundation 2010

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