George Georgiadis

Prof. Georgiadis’ expertise and research interests lie in incentive design and executive compensation.
His recent research studies how managers should structure incentive contracts to account for the possibility of gaming by the employees. For example, studies find that portfolio managers often take on inefficient left-tail risks to boost their pay, and CEOs may forgo positive-NPV investments in pursuit of smoother earnings. His research has been published in prestigious journals including the Review of Economic Studies, the RAND Journal of Economics, and the American Economic Journal.

At Kellogg, Prof. Georgiadis teaches Strategy and Organizations to MBA students. This course uses a microeconomic approach to ask how managers can design incentives to get employees to do what they want them to do. The first part of the course studies the internal organization of firms covering topics such as incentive pay, decentralization, transfer pricing, and complementarities. The second part examines the determinants of a firm’s boundaries; topics include horizontal and vertical mergers, outsourcing, and foreclosure.

Previously, he taught courses on industrial organization, antitrust economics, and contract theory to undergraduate, masters, and Ph.D students at the California Institute of Technology and Boston University.

How should you begin to think about designing incentive schemes for your employees, and why does it matter? In this workshop, we will start with a benchmark incentive scheme, and discuss its limitations and common pitfalls. We will conclude with ways to overcome these limitations.