Journal Article More on the Preservation of Preference Proximity and Anonymous Social Choice Get access Shmuel Nitzan Shmuel Nitzan Bar Ilan University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 104, Issue 1, February 1989, Pages 187–190, https://doi.org/10.2307/2937840 Published: 01 February 1989

I. Introduction, 315.—II. Collective budget determination under majority rule, 316.—III. The Lindahl budget determination model, 322.—Appendix, 324.

This paper considers the problem of hiring scientists for research and development projects when one takes explicit account of the fact that the scientist may be able to use the information acquired during the project in a rival enterprise. Management's problem is to determine an optimum labor policy for its project. The policy consists of an employment decision and a labor contract. Given optimum behavior, it is straightforward to analyze the effect of the potential for mobility of scientific personnel on project profitability and on research employment. We also formalize conditions under which one would expect to observe a scientist leaving his employer to set up or join a rival.