Publications & Accepted Articles

• Outside Options and Worker Effort (with A. Ahammer, F. Stiftinger), forthcoming, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics.
• When Protection Becomes Exploitation: The Impact of Firing Costs on Naïve Employees (with F. Englmaier, U. Glogowsky, M. Schwarz), 2026, Journal of Public Economics, 254, 105564.
• The Dynamics of Exploiting Overconfident Workers (with N. Klein), forthcoming, Journal of Labor Economics.
• Informal Incentives and Labor Markets  (with T. Murooka), 2025, Economic Journal, 135(665), 144-179.
• Introduction to Past and Future Developments in the Economics of Relational Contracts (with W.B. MacLeod, G. Muehlheusser), 2023, editorial preface to a Symposium on Relational Contracts, Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, 179(3-4).
• Reciprocity in Dynamic Employment Relationships, 2023, Management Science, 69(10), 5695-6415.
• Present Bias in the Labor Market – When it Pays to be Naive (with R. Seibel), 2022, Games and Economic Behavior, 135, 144-167.
• Transparency in Relational Contracts (with G. Zanarone), 2022, Strategic Management Journal, 43(5), 1046-1071.
• Size Matters – “Over”investments in a Relational Contracting Model  (with F. Englmaier), 2019, Economic Journal, 129(624), 3092-3106.
• Relational Contracts with Private Information on the Future Value of the Relationship: The Upside of Implicit Downsizing Costs  (with N. Klein), 2019, American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 11(4), 33-58.
• Teamwork as a Self-Disciplining Device (with H. Hakenes), 2019, American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 11(4), 1-32.
• The Commitment Role of Equity Financing  (with V. Merlo, G. Wamser), 2019, Journal of the European Economic Association, 17(4), 1232-1260.
• Minimum Wages and Relational Contracts, 2017, Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 33 (2), 301-331.
• Relational Contracts for Household Formation, Fertility Choice and Separation (with R. Rees, A. Wuppermann), 2016, Journal of Population Economics, 29(2), 421-455.
• Optimal Contracting with Private Military and Security Companies (with T. Hadjer), 2015, European Journal of Political Economy, 37, 220-240.
• On the Genesis of Multinational Foreign Affiliate Networks (with P. Egger, G. Wamser, V. Merlo), 2014, European Economic Review, 65(1), 136‐163.

Working Papers

• Toward a Bad Job Economy: AI Adoption, Agency Costs, and Job Design (with J. Li, C. Sun)
• Information Labor Exchange Teams and Participation in the Labor Market: Evidence from Rural Tanzania (with C. Arciniegas, C. Dumas)

Current Projects

• Compressing Today, Diverging Tomorrow? AI, Incentives, and Skill Formation (with Z. Zhang)
• From Production to Verification: How AI Changes the Organization of Work (with C. Heese, J. Li)
• Exploitation vs. Incentives in Relational Contracts: How Perceptions Shape Present-Bias Exploitation (with J. Weber)
• (Mis-)Allocation of Managerial Attention (with A. Ashraf, F. Stiftinger)
• Online Newspapers, Incentives for Journalists, and the Role of AI: A Series of Field Experiments (with M. Brottrager, D. Huffman, U. Glogowsky)

(Currently) Inactive Projects

• Long -Term Employment Relations when Agents are Present-Biased (with F. Englmaier, M. Schwarz)
• Relational Contracts, the Costs of Enforcing Formal Contracts, and Capital Structure Choice – Theory and Evidence  (with V. Merlo, G. Wamser)
• What Drives Reciprocal Behavior? The Optimal Provision of Incentives Over the Course of Careers  (with A. Schade, K. Schüssler)