Robert Gibbons
Sloan Distinguished Professor of Organizational Economics and Strategy, Sloan School and Department of Economics, MIT
4-5:30 pm
UM: 411 West Hall
WSU: 313 State Hall (via videoconference)
Following Pigou, many economists' first instinct is that the challenge within organizations is to "get the prices right" (or as close to right as possible). The associated "incentive system" approach to organizational design has been productive, but there are alternatives, such as a "political" approach in which the necessary prices do not exist. This talk will begin with a quick sketch of the incentive-system approach (see Gibbons (2005) for background), then move to current work on a political model (Baker, Gibbons, and Murphy, 2008), and finally suggest how both pricing and politics are subject to path-dependence, which offers one interpretation of "organizational capabilities" (as reflected in persistent performance differences among seemingly similar enterprises; see Gibbons (2006) for background).
Robert Gibbons develops game-theoretic models of the design and performance of organizations and contracts. Much of his research concerns "relational contracts" (i.e., agreements so rooted in the parties' particular circumstances that they are not written down, so that disputes cannot be adjudicated by such outsiders such as courts). Relational contracts arise frequently both within firms (such as between headquarters and divisions) and between firms (such as in alliances). His book, Game Theory for Applied Economists (Princeton University Press, 1992) has been translated into Chinese, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish. He is currently preparing a second book, a doctoral text on organizational economics, and is co-editing the Handbook of Organizational Economics (with J. Roberts). Gibbons served on the board of the Citicorp Behavioral Sciences Research Council for its duration (1994-2000) and on the board of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (2000-2006).
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Gibbons article: What the Folk Theorem doesn’t tell us | 52.44 KB |
| Gibbons article: Incentives Between Firms (and Within) | 158.62 KB |
| pdf of slides from Jan 31 Robert Gibbons talk | 1.06 MB |