AS.197.327 · Fall 2026
Syllabus
People, Power, and Pay: The Economics of the Workplace
Mondays and Wednesdays, 1:30-2:45 PM, in SNF Agora 109. The Fall 2026
semester runs from August 31 to December 11. The final exam takes place
during our last class meeting on Wednesday, December 9; final research
papers are due Wednesday, December 23.
Course Information
Instructor
Simon D. Halliday
Student hours
Wednesday 3-4 PM and Thursday 2-3 PM (current schedule)
Institution
Johns Hopkins University
Meeting time
Monday and Wednesday, 1:30-2:45 PM
Location
SNF Agora 109, Homewood Campus
Course dates
August 31-December 11, 2026
Key Dates
First class
Monday, August 31, 2026
Labor Day
Monday, September 7, 2026 - no class
Fall Break
October 22-23, 2026 - no effect on Monday/Wednesday meetings
Instructor travel
Wednesday, October 7, 2026 - no in-person class; asynchronous Team Production activity
Fall Recess
November 23-27, 2026
Last day of classes
Friday, December 11, 2026
Last class and final exam
Wednesday, December 9, 2026, 1:30-2:45 PM
Reading day
Monday, December 14, 2026
Final research paper
Wednesday, December 23, 2026, 11:30 PM
Course Frame
People, Power, and Pay examines incomplete contracts in the workplace:
the inability of workers and employers to write contracts that can be
verified and enforced at zero cost by third parties. We conceive of the
workplace broadly as an organization and draw heavily on organizational
economics and personnel economics.
The course also uses behavioral economics and related work in sociology,
management, and psychology to ask how human psychology, social preferences,
norms, and institutions shape workplace behavior.
Requisite Knowledge
Students should be ready to review and use the following concepts:
- Marginal benefit and marginal cost
- Best response and Nash equilibrium
- Labor force, employment, unemployment, and unemployment benefits
- Utility and indifference curves
- Efficiency
Assessment
| In-class reading responses, problems, and quiz questions |
10% |
| Problem sets |
5% |
| Brainstorming / half-formed thoughts |
5% |
| Project proposal |
5% |
| Draft project |
10% |
| Project presentation |
5% |
| Final project and response to comments |
15% |
| Oral midterm exam |
20% |
| Final exam |
25% |
Many class meetings will begin with a brief exercise based on the assigned
reading or recent course material. The format may be a written response,
an economic problem, or a short quiz question. Some exercises will be
completed individually and others collaboratively, as indicated in class.
These are low-stakes opportunities for continuous practice and feedback,
not tests designed to catch students out.
Assignment descriptions are summarized on the Assignments
page. Official due dates and submission instructions should be confirmed on Canvas.
Required Texts
The course uses Microeconomics: Competition, Conflict, and Coordination
by Samuel Bowles and Simon D. Halliday, together with selected chapters,
articles, and public writing listed in the reading guide.
Some readings are available only through the Johns Hopkins library or Canvas.
This public site lists bibliographic guidance and public links, but does not
publish copyrighted reading PDFs.
Course Schedule
Week 1 · Aug 31-Sep 6
Foundations: Organizations, Contracts, and Transactions
Economic organization, transaction costs, incomplete contracts, and the employment relationship. First meeting: Monday, August 31.
Fall 2026 begins
Week 2 · Sep 7-13
Information: Contracts, Norms, and Power I
Labor Day on Monday; class meets Wednesday, September 9. Asymmetric information, verifiability, relational contracting, and the limits of formal agreements.
One class meeting
Week 3 · Sep 14-20
Information: Contracts, Norms, and Power II
Principal-agent problems, job matches, authority, pay-setting and transparency, and the distribution of rents.
Problem Set 1
Week 4 · Sep 21-27
Work, Wages, and Unemployment I
Employment rents, exit and voice, worker representation, unemployment, discipline, and worker fallback positions.
Prepare Brainstorming 1
Week 5 · Sep 28-Oct 4
Work, Wages, and Unemployment II
Monday, September 28: monopsony and an introduction to the whole-economy model, drawing on Bowles and Halliday, Chapter 11 sections 11.9-11.15. Wednesday, September 30: continue Hirschman (Chapters 2-3), then Camerer and Weber (sections 1-3).
Brainstorming 1 due Mon Sep 28, 5 PM on Canvas
Week 6 · Oct 5-11
Team Production
Team incentives, monitoring, coordination, and the structure of firms. Class meets Monday, October 5. There is no in-person meeting Wednesday, October 7 while the instructor travels to the Progress Conference; students complete a short asynchronous Team Production activity instead.
No in-person class Oct 7Asynchronous activity
Week 7 · Oct 12-18
Productivity and Management
A brief Team Production follow-through on Monday, followed by management practices, productivity dispersion, authority, and organizational barriers to diffusion.
Problem Set 2Brainstorming 2
Week 8 · Oct 19-25
Behavioral Economics and Principal-Agent Relationships
Social preferences, identity, outside options, beliefs, subjective evaluation and promotion, and behavior inside organizations. Both Monday and Wednesday meetings occur before the October 22-23 fall break.
Week 9 · Oct 26-Nov 1
Oral Midterm
Individual oral midterm meetings and synthesis of the first eight weeks.
Oral midterm
Week 10 · Nov 2-8
Motivation and Incentives
Nonmonetary incentives, work as meaning, and the possibility that incentives backfire.
Week 11 · Nov 9-15
Control, Trust, and Workplace Norms
Control aversion, reciprocity, workplace norms, autonomy, monitoring practices, trust, and retention.
Project proposal
Week 12 · Nov 16-22
AI and the Organization of Work
Tasks and jobs, human and AI decision authority, monitoring, trust, workplace evidence on productivity and learning, and the distribution of workplace power.
Project draftPeer review
Week 13 · Nov 23-29
Fall Recess
November 23-27. No classes.
Weeks 14-15 · Nov 30-Dec 11
Project Presentations, Summing Up, and Final Assessment
Student presentations and final synthesis. Depending on student selections and available class time, these meetings may also include one or more optional modules from the reading guide. The final exam takes place during the last class meeting on Wednesday, December 9, from 1:30-2:45 PM. Final research papers, including revisions in response to draft feedback, are due Wednesday, December 23, at 11:30 PM.