We use a data set describing ownership of productive assets in the carpentry trade to evaluate several factors influencing the allocation of asset ownership between an employer and his employees. The findings suggest that the allocation involves a tradeoff between two incentive effects influencing how the employee uses the asset and what the employer decides it should be used for. In particular...

Private ownership creates monopoly power, harming the dynamic efficiency of asset allocation. Common ownership improves allocative efficiency, but eliminates incentives to invest in the common value of assets. We propose a simple partial private ownership system, Harberger licensing, for public assets. Lessors self-assess a price at which they commit to sell the asset to any interested buyer an...

Asset reallocation is often observed in disintegration, divestures, and dissolution of business firms. Yet the property right theory of the firm assumes that asset ownership cannot be renegotiated when business relationships are severed. This paper shows that this assumption is quite innocuous: allowing renegotiation of asset ownership has essentially no effects on the

BACKGROUND In most of the developing world, ownership of modern household assets such as television sets, refrigerators, microwave ovens and washing machines is becoming common. Ownership of these household assets, however, promotes sedentary behaviour which has implications for obesity and non-communicable disease conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, stroke and other cardiovascular condi...

Explaining patterns of asset ownership is a central goal of both organizational economics and industrial organization. We develop a model of asset ownership in trucking, which we test by examining how the adoption of different classes of on-board computers (OBCs) between 1987 and 1997 in uenced whether shippers use their own trucks for hauls or contract with for-hire carriers. We Ž nd that OBC...

This paper studies the role of contested ownership in a situation where two players have to make a personand asset-specific investment, and when no complete contracts can be written. It compares contested ownership to the various ex ante ownership structures typically discussed in the literature (following the influential work by Grossman, Hart, and Moore). The paper shows that contested owners...

The high prevalence of human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome in sub-Saharan Africa has resulted in a dramatic increase in orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) over the past decade. These children typically rely on extended family networks for support, but the magnitude of the crisis has resulted in traditional familial networks becoming overwhelmed and more economica...