I investigate whether the presence of intrinsically motivated agents benefits firms in a competitive environment. I find that firms may obtain higher profits by hiring self-interested agents than by hiring motivated agents. This is because the agents’ intrinsic motivation has counteracting effects on the profits obtained by the firms. On the one hand, motivation has a positive impact on the pro...

The literature on incentive contracting suggests that the optimal performance pay contract depends on a tradeoff between productivity and agency costs. The effect of employee ability on this tradeoff is theoretically ambiguous, as the employee’s private gains (through more sophisticated gaming responses) may exceed the employer’s productive benefits. Similarly, employees’ “adverse learning” abo...

Since 80s, along with the heating-up competition in finance industry and the liberalization trend of financial supervision, a tendency of integration appears in world three financial service fields, namely banking, insurance, and security. It threats the banking business. The banking industry that always possesses the core position in financial system faces enormous challenges. On the other han...

In this paper we study the optimal import policy in an oligopolistic market with a given number of quantity-setting firms. In the absence of fixed costs, we show that if the policy instrument is an import quota, the optimal policy is either free trade or autarky, while if the instrument is a tariff the optimal policy is neither free trade nor autarky. In the case of fixed costs, we show that co...

In recent years, return freight insurance (RFI) has emerged as a solution to the problem of returns goods purchased online. However, although RFI reduces costs both parties and increases purchase intention consumers, it also rate retailers’ profits. Therefore, some online retailers have looked at increasing their service effort means improving level reducing returns. Considering impact efforts ...