Ray Fisman has a new book you might want to check out

Though we've disagreed strongly in the past, Ray Fisman is a smart guy with some insightful things to say about a problem Joseph and I have been thinking a lot about, how interests go out of alignment and how we can engineer big, complex organizations to keep that from happening.

Fisman has a new book out on the subject: “The Org: The Underlying Logic of the Office.” Here's a quote from an enthusiastic review in the New York Times.

This suggests a good rule of thumb to determine when a private company will outperform the public sector: if the task is clear-cut and it’s possible to define concrete goals and reward those who meet them, the private sector will probably do better. “If I can write a perfect contract in which I pay for a concrete observable outcome, can rule out cream-skimming and can ensure the measure is not gamed, there is no reason that the private sector can’t do it better,” Professor Fisman said.