Kevin J Murphy
Biographic Data
| ID | 1075263 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kevin J Murphy |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kevin J |
| FAMILY NAME | Murphy |
| SIGNATURE | MURPHY K J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Southern California |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8982-0213 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 136 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 11 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1984 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
From Incentives to Control to Adaptation: Exploring Interactions between Formal and Relational Governance
In 1991 we began to model interactions between formal and relational incentive contracts. We saw this work as agency theory. By the time the paper was published (BGM, 1994), we had begun to view the research agenda more broadly - with connections to organizational culture, the theory of firms' boundaries, and more. Eventually, we built from this initial work, analyzing delegation within organizations as necessarily informal and moving beyond rela…
What Are the Consequences of Right-to-Work for Union Membership
Beginning in 2012, several states enacted right-to-work laws, which hamper the ability of labor unions to collect agency fees to finance union services and activities. Because the processes by which these adoptions took place are arguably exogenous, identification of the causal effect of right-to-work on unionization within a state becomes possible. The author uses a set of semi-independent cross-sections drawn from the Current Population Survey …
Do Charter School Students Outperform Public School Students on Standardized Tests in Michigan
Objective We compare academic achievement in charter schools versus two types of traditional public school in the State of Michigan over a 10‐year period. Charter schools serve as a reform measure for failing public schools, so the natural research question is: Do charter schools generate higher achievement levels than observationally comparable public schools? Methods We have assembled a longitudinal data set spanning academic years 2002/2003–20…
Relational Contracts and the Theory of the Firm
Relational contracts—informal agreements sustained by the value of future relationships—are prevalent within and between firms. We develop repeated-game models showing why and how relational contracts within firms (vertical integration) differ from those between (nonintegration). We show that integration affects the parties' temptations to renege on a given relational contract, and hence affects the best relational contract the parties can sustai…
Subjective Performance Measures in Optimal Incentive Contracts
Incentive contracts often include important subjective components that mitigate incentive distortions caused by imperfect objective measures. This paper explores the combined use of subjective and objective performance measures in (respectively) implicit and explicit incentive contracts. We show that the presence of sufficiently effective explicit contracts can render all implicit contracts infeasible, even those that would otherwise yield the fi…
Optimal Incentive Contracts in the Presence of Career Concerns: Theory and Evidence
This paper studies optimal incentive contracts when workers have career concerns--concerns about the effects of current performance on future compensation. The authors show that the optimal compensation contract optimizes total incentives: the combination of the implicit incentives from career concerns and the explicit incentives from the compensation contract. Thus, the explicit incentives from the optimal compensation contract should be stronge…
Determinants of Contract Duration in Collective Bargaining Agreements
The author develops a model incorporating variables that previous studies have hypothesized as determinants of labor contract duration, then empirically tests the model using a data set containing bargaining pair—specific, industry-specific, and union-specific variables on 373 contracts signed over the period 1977–87. Three findings, all consistent with the model, are that the rate of wage change in a contract is positively related to the contrac…
Performance Pay and Top-Management Incentives
The authors' estimates of the pay-performance relation (including pay, options, stockholding, and dismissal) for chief executive officers indicate that CEO wealth changes $3.25 for every $1,000 changes in shareholder wealth. Although the incentives generated by stock ownership are large relative to pay and dismissal incentives, most CEOs hold trivial fractions of the firms' stock, and ownership levels have declined over the past fifty years. The …
Relative Performance Evaluation for Chief Executive Officers
Relative performance evaluation (RPE) provides employees with an incentive to perform well while insulating their compensation from shocks that also affect the performances of other workers in the same firm, industry, or market. This paper reviews the benefits and costs of RPE and tests for the presence of RPE in the compensation contracts of chief executive officers (CEOs) using data on 1,668 CEOs from 1,049 corporations from 1974 to 1986. The r…
Relative Performance Evaluation for Chief Executive Officers
Relative performance evaluation (RPE) provides employees with an incentive to perform well while insulating their compensation from shocks that also affect the performances of other workers in the same firm, industry, or market. This paper reviews the benefits and costs of RPE and tests for the presence of RPE in the compensation contracts of chief executive officers (CEOs) using data on 1,668 CEOs from 1,049 corporations from 1974 to 1986. The r…
Determinants of Geographic Unemployment Rates: A Selectively Pooled-Simultaneous Model
Using a procedure that allows selective pooling of certain subsamples of the data, this study examines the determinants of state unemployment rates in the United States. By selectively pooling the data, more reliable parameter estimates result than could otherwise be obtained were the data disaggregated to the state level, and the specification error inherent in a complete pooling of the data is avoided. The models are estimated using two stage l…
Performance Pay and Top-Management Incentives
The authors' estimates of the pay-performance relation (including pay, options, stockholding, and dismissal) for chief executive officers indicate that CEO wealth changes $3.25 for every $1,000 changes in shareholder wealth. Although the incentives generated by stock ownership are large relative to pay and dismissal incentives, most CEOs hold trivial fractions of the firms' stock, and ownership levels have declined over the past fifty years. The …
Optimal Incentive Contracts in the Presence of Career Concerns: Theory and Evidence
This paper studies optimal incentive contracts when workers have career concerns--concerns about the effects of current performance on future compensation. The authors show that the optimal compensation contract optimizes total incentives: the combination of the implicit incentives from career concerns and the explicit incentives from the compensation contract. Thus, the explicit incentives from the optimal compensation contract should be stronge…
Relative Performance Evaluation for Chief Executive Officers
Relative performance evaluation (RPE) provides employees with an incentive to perform well while insulating their compensation from shocks that also affect the performances of other workers in the same firm, industry, or market. This paper reviews the benefits and costs of RPE and tests for the presence of RPE in the compensation contracts of chief executive officers (CEOs) using data on 1,668 CEOs from 1,049 corporations from 1974 to 1986. The r…
What Are the Consequences of Right-to-Work for Union Membership
Beginning in 2012, several states enacted right-to-work laws, which hamper the ability of labor unions to collect agency fees to finance union services and activities. Because the processes by which these adoptions took place are arguably exogenous, identification of the causal effect of right-to-work on unionization within a state becomes possible. The author uses a set of semi-independent cross-sections drawn from the Current Population Survey …
Determinants of Contract Duration in Collective Bargaining Agreements
The author develops a model incorporating variables that previous studies have hypothesized as determinants of labor contract duration, then empirically tests the model using a data set containing bargaining pair—specific, industry-specific, and union-specific variables on 373 contracts signed over the period 1977–87. Three findings, all consistent with the model, are that the rate of wage change in a contract is positively related to the contrac…
Relative Performance Evaluation for Chief Executive Officers
Relative performance evaluation (RPE) provides employees with an incentive to perform well while insulating their compensation from shocks that also affect the performances of other workers in the same firm, industry, or market. This paper reviews the benefits and costs of RPE and tests for the presence of RPE in the compensation contracts of chief executive officers (CEOs) using data on 1,668 CEOs from 1,049 corporations from 1974 to 1986. The r…
Determinants of Geographic Unemployment Rates: A Selectively Pooled-Simultaneous Model
Using a procedure that allows selective pooling of certain subsamples of the data, this study examines the determinants of state unemployment rates in the United States. By selectively pooling the data, more reliable parameter estimates result than could otherwise be obtained were the data disaggregated to the state level, and the specification error inherent in a complete pooling of the data is avoided. The models are estimated using two stage l…
Relative Performance Evaluation for Chief Executive Officers
Relative performance evaluation (RPE) provides employees with an incentive to perform well while insulating their compensation from shocks that also affect the performances of other workers in the same firm, industry, or market. This paper reviews the benefits and costs of RPE and tests for the presence of RPE in the compensation contracts of chief executive officers (CEOs) using data on 1,668 CEOs from 1,049 corporations from 1974 to 1986. The r…
Performance Pay and Top-Management Incentives
The authors' estimates of the pay-performance relation (including pay, options, stockholding, and dismissal) for chief executive officers indicate that CEO wealth changes $3.25 for every $1,000 changes in shareholder wealth. Although the incentives generated by stock ownership are large relative to pay and dismissal incentives, most CEOs hold trivial fractions of the firms' stock, and ownership levels have declined over the past fifty years. The …
Relative Performance Evaluation for Chief Executive Officers
Relative performance evaluation (RPE) provides employees with an incentive to perform well while insulating their compensation from shocks that also affect the performances of other workers in the same firm, industry, or market. This paper reviews the benefits and costs of RPE and tests for the presence of RPE in the compensation contracts of chief executive officers (CEOs) using data on 1,668 CEOs from 1,049 corporations from 1974 to 1986. The r…
Optimal Incentive Contracts in the Presence of Career Concerns: Theory and Evidence
This paper studies optimal incentive contracts when workers have career concerns--concerns about the effects of current performance on future compensation. The authors show that the optimal compensation contract optimizes total incentives: the combination of the implicit incentives from career concerns and the explicit incentives from the compensation contract. Thus, the explicit incentives from the optimal compensation contract should be stronge…
Determinants of Contract Duration in Collective Bargaining Agreements
The author develops a model incorporating variables that previous studies have hypothesized as determinants of labor contract duration, then empirically tests the model using a data set containing bargaining pair—specific, industry-specific, and union-specific variables on 373 contracts signed over the period 1977–87. Three findings, all consistent with the model, are that the rate of wage change in a contract is positively related to the contrac…
Subjective Performance Measures in Optimal Incentive Contracts
Incentive contracts often include important subjective components that mitigate incentive distortions caused by imperfect objective measures. This paper explores the combined use of subjective and objective performance measures in (respectively) implicit and explicit incentive contracts. We show that the presence of sufficiently effective explicit contracts can render all implicit contracts infeasible, even those that would otherwise yield the fi…
Relational Contracts and the Theory of the Firm
Relational contracts—informal agreements sustained by the value of future relationships—are prevalent within and between firms. We develop repeated-game models showing why and how relational contracts within firms (vertical integration) differ from those between (nonintegration). We show that integration affects the parties' temptations to renege on a given relational contract, and hence affects the best relational contract the parties can sustai…
Do Charter School Students Outperform Public School Students on Standardized Tests in Michigan
Objective We compare academic achievement in charter schools versus two types of traditional public school in the State of Michigan over a 10‐year period. Charter schools serve as a reform measure for failing public schools, so the natural research question is: Do charter schools generate higher achievement levels than observationally comparable public schools? Methods We have assembled a longitudinal data set spanning academic years 2002/2003–20…
From Incentives to Control to Adaptation: Exploring Interactions between Formal and Relational Governance
In 1991 we began to model interactions between formal and relational incentive contracts. We saw this work as agency theory. By the time the paper was published (BGM, 1994), we had begun to view the research agenda more broadly - with connections to organizational culture, the theory of firms' boundaries, and more. Eventually, we built from this initial work, analyzing delegation within organizations as necessarily informal and moving beyond rela…
What Are the Consequences of Right-to-Work for Union Membership
Beginning in 2012, several states enacted right-to-work laws, which hamper the ability of labor unions to collect agency fees to finance union services and activities. Because the processes by which these adoptions took place are arguably exogenous, identification of the causal effect of right-to-work on unionization within a state becomes possible. The author uses a set of semi-independent cross-sections drawn from the Current Population Survey …
Economics (11 works) · Microeconomics (8 works) · Business (7 works) · Incentive (6 works) · Labour economics (6 works) · Corporate Finance and Governance (5 works) · Computer Science (4 works) · Demographic economics (3 works) · Demography (3 works) · Econometrics (3 works)