We study voluntary cost disclosure by duopoly firms when they can invest in a cost-reduction technology, i.e., when their private cost is endogenously determined. We find that, contrary to most of the literature, firms disclose their endogenous cost information regardless of the type of competition. The underlying mechanisms and welfare implications, however, are different. Under Bertrand competition, cost disclosure helps a firm avoid aggressive investment in cost reduction to coordinate actions to the mutual advantage of the duopoly firms. Under Cournot competition, disclosing cost information enables a firm to show a hardened stance toward the competing firm. Although firms gain from their disclosure decisions under Bertrand competition, their disclosure decisions under Cournot competition place them in a prisoner’s dilemma, as both firms would be better off if they chose not to disclose their information. Consequently, consumers may lose under Bertrand competition but gain under Cournot competition.

In this paper, we test the “labor donation” hypothesis, which posits that intrinsically motivated individuals willingly accept lower compensation to work in nonprofit organizations (NPOs). We do so by examining the response of NPO CEO compensation to exogeneous increases in labor costs resulting from state-level minimum wage hikes, finding these increases are followed by declines in CEO compensation. Consistent with the labor donation hypothesis, we find the declines in compensation are larger for CEOs who we expect to have greater intrinsic motivation, i.e., those whose NPOs are headquartered in counties with higher levels of religiosity, in counties with greater levels of social capital, and those who work for a local NPO as opposed to a national NPO. In contrast to the decline in compensation we observe for NPO CEOs, we do not find an impact on for-profit CEO compensation.