When economists think and write about organizations, they typically focus on commercial firms A relatively
small number of economists, however, have recently begun focusing on the organization in which they work,
universities. This note reviews some of this literature and draws parallelisms between the behavior and characteristics
affirms and the behavior and characteristics of universities. One will note that most of this literature is based
on the experience of US universities, while few studies look at West European universities. As far as I know there are no
systematic (English language) studies that use Central and East European universities as subject of study. In this note, I will focus on 4 issues: the incentives given by universities to their employees, the internal organization of
universities, the competition between universities for students and faculty and the use of reputation by universities.