In this dissertation, I examine the effect of statutory regimes on two common decisions made by market agents that are characterized by information asymmetries. For each decision, specifically, the decision to engage in accounting fraud by firm managers and the choice of contract to offer legal representation, a theoretical model is used to offer predictions which are then tested using laboratory experiments. Chapter I examines the effects of Sarbanes-Oxley provisions pertaining to whistle-blower protections and reporting requirements on a managerial team’s incentive to commit accounting fraud. Analysis predicts that whistle-blowing does not occur in equilibrium, but that the whistle-blower protections combined with the reporting requirements can reduce fraud, and are most likely to do so when managers are heterogeneous in their aversion to sanctions. Interestingly, amnesty provisions have no effect on the equilibrium level of fraud. In line with previous literature, equity compensation induces managerial effort, but also provides the incentive for management to fraudulently misreport the financial health of the firm. Chapter II discusses the results of an experimental test of the theory and finds that whistle-blowing does occur in part due to coordination failures among members of the team. The out-of-equilibrium behavior from which whistle-blowing results renders the theoretical prediction that amnesty does not matter to be moot, and analysis shows that whistle-blowing decreases the amount of fraud that goes undetected by authorities, and that this effect is magnified by amnesty provisions. Otherwise, the experiments yield strong support for the theoretical predictions of the model. Chapter III uses a theoretical model and experimental test to consider the possibility that contingent fees may improve the quality of legal services by allowing clients to screen low-quality attorneys. The model suggests that caps on contingent fees may reduce the average quality of legal representation by allowing low-quality attorneys to remain in the market and decrease client welfare by allowing attorneys to earn rents. Experimental evidence provides support for these predictions, showing that client welfare and screening decrease as caps become more stringent, even if the caps are not do not prevent screening.

A particular body of research examines the issue of linking executive pay to firm performance by focusing on the observation that CEO compensation varies widely across firms, even within the same industry. This research assumes that the same compensation model (i.e., structure of the model, explanatory variables, and coefficients on those variables) can be applied to all CEOs. If you will, extant research assumes a one-size-fits-all CEO compensation model approach to empirical analysis. Furthermore, much of this research also examines firm performance and similarly utilizes a one-size-fits-all firm performance model. I develop a proxy for CEO managerial power that I use to rank and classify CEOs into two groups: Elite CEOs (above a cut-off by the ranking) and Non-Elite CEOs (the remaining CEOs). As a note, I demonstrate that ranking the CEOs by my proxy for CEO managerial power is not the same as simply ranking the CEOs by their total direct compensation. My empirical results show that a one-size-fits-all model can be rejected. That is, the estimated coefficients in compensation models and firm performance models are different for Elite CEOs as compared to Non-Elite CEOs. Also, firms with Elite CEOs do not have higher performance. This suggests that Elite CEOs extract excessive compensation due to undue influence over their respective boards rather than to superior performance. These findings have both academic and corporate policy implications.

Learning theories playa prominent role in new theories of competitive advantage. Despite the recent progress in understanding interorganizationallearning (inter-firm knowledge sharing), gaps and shortcomings remain. Inter-firm knowledge sharing involves risks and dilemma. Little is known about the charactetistics of global supply chain design that would encourage inter-firm knowledge sharing, and how these collaborative activities could lead to improving the long-term performance ofthe individual companies and the supply chain as a whole. Furthermore, previous studies on inter-firm collaboration mainly looked at operational efficiency as the key performance measurement. Relationship value should be taken as a more critical criterion variable when firms are driven by more demanding customers, global competition, and slowgrowth economies. Building from the resource-based view, transaction cost economics, relational exchange view, and political economy paradigm, this study seeks to provide insight to how firms commit their resources to engage in knowledge sharing activities with their overseas supply chain partners, and the implications on horizontal (i.e., crossborder) segmentation pertaining to firms' sourcing and marketing strategy. Using the extant literature fronl the fields of marketing, supply chain management, and international business, a theoretical model was constructed and then tested through a Web survey involving 105 supply chain dyads (210 responses) from 4 manufacturers representing 3 industries with facilities located in 19 countries. The survey data were analyzed using structural equation modeling to simultaneously test the 8 hypotheses. Both the buyers and the sellers in this study shared the consensus that environmental uncertainty, environmental fit, organizational fit, and idiosyncratic investments facilitate inter-firm knowledge sharing in spite ofthe risks and dilemma associated with such activities. Both sides ofthe dyad also found the investments in such activities worthwhile, when outcomes were measured by relationship value, explored from the perspectives of both the buyers and the sellers.

The socioeconomic determinants of participant in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and effects of the program on nutrient intakes are investigated. The dependent variable is transformed by logarithm which facilitates estimation of the model. Marginal effects of explanatory variables are calculated which make interpretation of the effects of explanatory variables easier. The result suggests SNAP plays a significant role in nutrient intakes. The effects of participation in SNAP are negative on vitamin C and positive on all other nutrients (protein, vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium, and iron), for males, females, and both genders combined. Income, household size, presence of children, and other socio-demographic variables all affect individuals’ decisions on program participation and nutrient intakes. Results suggest the effects of socio-demographic variables are very different, in signs and magnitudes, between the participants and non-participants. These differentiated effects of socio-demographic variables are likely to be masked by the use of a more conventional model (such as the single or multiple equation treatment effect models) and highlight the importance of using the Switching System Regression.

The purpose of this study was to examine how universities are being exposed to Title IX liability due to increasing sexual assault and sexual harassment accusations of student-athletes. This thesis examined recorded case law with regard to student-athlete sexual misconduct as well as compared law reviews and academic journal findings to determine the extent of which a university is responsible for such misconduct in an effort to propose recommendations to assist administrators in understanding and managing these liability issues. Colleges and universities are becoming increasingly entangled in sexual harassment lawsuits and settlements involving student-athletes. These incidents are costly both monetarily, and in damage to the reputation and integrity of the school and its athletic program (Duffy & Osborne, 2005). Studentathletes’ help universities generate millions of dollars annually toward athletic departments, provide national marketing opportunities, as well as provide entertainment for their communities, alumni and fans nationwide (Harrison & Moye, 2006). This trend of incidents of harassment has fostered a growing concern as to whether or not a university should be held responsible for the behavioral misconduct of their student - athletes. Athletic departments and their administrators are under increased scrutiny with regard to student-athlete behavior, specifically sexual harassment and sexual assault. Previous research has indicated that male athletes make up roughly two percent of a campus’ population and are named in 23% of sexual assault cases (Duffy & Osborne, 2005).

<p>This dissertation explores the incentive issues and strategic interactions among decentralized parties in three operations management environments: inventory systems, revenue management and healthcare policies. The first model studies the impact of multilateral asymmetric information about inventories in a two-echelon inventory systems. The second model applies optimization techniques to solve a monopolist's revenue problem where the seller's cost function is not separable across buyers with multidimensional private information. The third model uses a game-theoretical approach to study the decentralized resource allocation between self-interested countries to control an epidemic disease.</p> / Dissertation

The socioeconomic determinants of participant in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and effects of the program on nutrient intakes are investigated. The dependent variable is transformed by logarithm which facilitates estimation of the model. Marginal effects of explanatory variables are calculated which make interpretation of the effects of explanatory variables easier. The result suggests SNAP plays a significant role in nutrient intakes. The effects of participation in SNAP are negative on vitamin C and positive on all other nutrients (protein, vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium, and iron), for males, females, and both genders combined. Income, household size, presence of children, and other socio-demographic variables all affect individuals’ decisions on program participation and nutrient intakes. Results suggest the effects of socio-demographic variables are very different, in signs and magnitudes, between the participants and non-participants. These differentiated effects of socio-demographic variables are likely to be masked by the use of a more conventional model (such as the single or multiple equation treatment effect models) and highlight the importance of using the Switching System Regression.

The purpose of this study was to examine how universities are being exposed to Title IX liability due to increasing sexual assault and sexual harassment accusations of student-athletes. This thesis examined recorded case law with regard to student-athlete sexual misconduct as well as compared law reviews and academic journal findings to determine the extent of which a university is responsible for such misconduct in an effort to propose recommendations to assist administrators in understanding and managing these liability issues. Colleges and universities are becoming increasingly entangled in sexual harassment lawsuits and settlements involving student-athletes. These incidents are costly both monetarily, and in damage to the reputation and integrity of the school and its athletic program (Duffy & Osborne, 2005). Studentathletes’ help universities generate millions of dollars annually toward athletic departments, provide national marketing opportunities, as well as provide entertainment for their communities, alumni and fans nationwide (Harrison & Moye, 2006). This trend of incidents of harassment has fostered a growing concern as to whether or not a university should be held responsible for the behavioral misconduct of their student - athletes. Athletic departments and their administrators are under increased scrutiny with regard to student-athlete behavior, specifically sexual harassment and sexual assault. Previous research has indicated that male athletes make up roughly two percent of a campus’ population and are named in 23% of sexual assault cases (Duffy & Osborne, 2005).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--New York University, Graduate School of Business Administration, 2006. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 57-65). Also available in electronic format on the World Wide Web. Access restricted to users affiliated with licensed institutions.

Overprecision in judgment is the most robust type of overconfidence, and the one least susceptible to debiasing. It refers to people’s excessive certainty in the accuracy of their estimates, predictions or beliefs. Research on overprecision finds that confidence intervals, estimated ranges that judges are confident will include the correct answer, tend to include the correct answer significantly less often than what their assigned confidence level would suggest. For example, 90% confidence intervals typically include the correct answer about 50% of the time (Klayman, Soll, González-Vallejo, & Barlas, 1999). By this standard, confidence intervals appear too narrow, or overprecise. This dissertation focuses on effectively reducing this bias. In this dissertation, I present a novel elicitation method which can reduce overprecision, sometimes eliminating the bias. This method, called Subjective Probability Interval Estimates, or, in short, SPIES, presents the judge with the entire range of possible values, divided into intervals. The judge estimates, for each interval, the probability that it includes the correct answer. Since these intervals include the entire range of possible values, the sum of these subjective probabilities is constrained to equal exactly 100%. This work presents six experiments, organized in two parts. Part I focuses on the use of SPIES for eliciting quantitative estimates, and tests it against other elicitation methods in three experiments. Experiment 1 included a within-subject comparison of SPIES and two other elicitation methods, namely 90% confidence intervals and 5th and 95th fractile estimates, and found that SPIES produce interval estimates with significantly higher hit-rates than the other two methods. Experiment 2 varied the range which the SPIES task spanned and the number of intervals included in it, and found that SPIES outperformed the confidence interval method across all configurations. Experiment 3 tested the robustness of this effect to different value 5 scales, and to variations in the extremity of true values on the range. SPIES again produced consistently more inclusive and better calibrated estimates than confidence intervals. In Part II, I tested whether SPIES can improve estimates in other elicitation formats. Participants made multiple estimates, using SPIES for some and confidence intervals for others. Participants in Experiment 4 produced confidence intervals with better calibration with their assigned confidence level after having used SPIES in a prior estimate than before having practiced with SPIES. This effect held even when the two estimates had no shared content, suggesting that SPIES influence the estimation process, rather than merely increase the amount of relevant information already present in memory when making the second estimate. Experiment 5 tested the effect of SPIES on subsequent confidence intervals in two types of estimates. When participants could retrieve a relatively homogeneous set of values but were asked to estimate likelihoods of values across a wide range of possible outcomes, they responded by improving the inclusiveness and calibration of their subsequent confidence intervals. However, when the value set in the first estimate was diverse, such that retrieving evidence for the entire range of the SPIES was easy, no effect was observed in subsequent estimates. This suggests that judges do not simply generalize the SPIES process to subsequent confidence intervals. Rather, they might react to the conflict between their knowledge and the estimates they had to make. This conflict may increase doubt, leading to an adjustment in subsequent estimates to account for this uncertainty. Experiment 6 manipulated the existence of a conflict between participants’ knowledge of the distribution of possible values and the structure of the SPIES task, by varying the value set’s exposure time. When exposure time was very long, participants could assign each interval in the 6 SPIES task its according likelihood without conflict, and when it was very short, participants’ knowledge of the value set came mainly from the SPIES task itself. SPIES did not improve subsequent confidence intervals in either of these two conditions. Rather, only when exposure time was moderate, as it was in Experiment 5, did SPIES result in improved calibration of subsequent confidence intervals. Together, results of all experiments show that SPIES is an effective method for reducing overprecision in judgment. It allows for the elicitation of more inclusive and better calibrated estimates than those produced by the confidence interval method for a wide variety of estimate types. In addition, it can enact changes in judges’ estimation process, such that their subsequent estimates, elicited by traditional methods, display better accuracy. These features make SPIES an effective tool to reduce one of Judgment and Decision Making’s most robust biases.