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James Malcomson is a British-Irish economist. He is emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Oxford [1] and emeritus Fellow of All Souls College. [2] He is a specialist in the fields of labour economics and contract theory.
Following graduation with a BA in economics at the University of Cambridge (Gonville and Caius College) in 1967, Malcomson studied for a doctorate in economics at Harvard University, which he completed in 1973 [3] with a thesis supervised by the Nobel laureate Wassily Leontief.
Malcomson was lecturer, then senior lecturer, at the University of York (1972–85), Professor of Economics at the University of Southampton (1985–1999) and then statutory Professor of Economics at the University of Oxford and Fellow of All Souls College (1999–2013). He was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 2000 and Fellow of the Econometric Society in 2005. [4] He chaired [5] the Office of Health Economics Commission on Competition in the NHS, 2011–2012 [6] and served as a member of the Review Body on Doctors’ and Dentists’ Remuneration, 2015–2021. [7]
Malcomson's early research analysed vintage effects in investment, especially the implications for obsolescence, replacement and utilisation of capital equipment and the effects of tax policy on these. He derived rigorous theoretical models of optimal investment and replacement that do not rely on stationarity, [8] showed how optimal policies relate to simple rules, and derived analytic results for the effects of changes in tax policy on investment and replacement. [9] He also devised ways to estimate such models empirically without imposing stationarity, an essential step in predicting the short-run effects of tax policy changes. [10] [11] He additionally explored dynamic inconsistency in government policies, [12] the Laffer Curve, [13] and the impact of trade unions. [14]
Malcomson's empirical research on production convinced him of the need for economists to understand better the labour side of the production process and much of his more recent research has been directed towards that. [15] One of his main concerns has been with different ways of motivating employees when important aspects of performance are not easily specified in an employment contract and their implications: high pay coupled with the threat of dismissal for unsatisfactory performance (efficiency wages), [16] [17] competition for promotion, [18] [19] [20] [21] tournaments [22] and repeated interaction over time , [23] which "showed that the optimal long-term contract can be replicated by a sequence of optimal static contracts when the agent's saving decision can be controlled by the principal." [24] With W. Bentley MacLeod, he characterized the full set of outcomes that can be sustained in such repeated principal-agent contexts, described as "the "classic" relational contract model" [25] and "(t)he most complete analysis of relational contracts under symmetric information". [26] Together they also showed that tournaments and competition for promotion can provide effective methods of motivation provided agent-employees are sufficiently heterogeneous in their abilities, a system that “mimics a remarkable number of the features of actual job ladders in internal labor markets”. [27] Performance-related bonuses are effective even when agent-employees are homogeneous but may result in less efficient outcomes than efficiency wages when prospective employees are plentiful relative to jobs. [28] But when employees differ in abilities, competition for promotion may be open to influence activities and so distort allocation of employees to more senior jobs [29] [30] [31] and efficient outcomes in the future prevent full separation of abilities when differences are sufficiently fine in which "Malcomson provides a general analysis of relational contracts with persistent private information. He shows that full revelation of information is inconsistent with continuation payoffs being on the Pareto frontier, and therefore it generalizes the observation that asymmetric information leads to conflict in relational contracts." [32] This approach has been taken up in the subsequent literature. [33] These results have implications for dual economies and cyclical behavior, in which the "interplay between competition and relational contracts also has implications for output over the business cycle". [34] The implications for labour markets are surveyed in and, more completely, in [35] and those for economic organizations in.
Other research with W. Bentley MacLeod has shown that the types of contracts used in many practical situations have properties that theory suggests are appropriate for protecting investments in general and specific assets. [36] [37] Research with other co-authors has shown how time-serving apprenticeships can mitigate incentive issues in training [38] and the role for not-for-profit providers in provision of public sector services. [39] Malcomson also analysed forms of contract appropriate for the provision of health services, [40] [41] and, most notably, the quality of care and, developments surveyed in. [42]
Malcomson is married to the social gerontologist Dr Sally Richards. [43] They live in Oxford.
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