Are poor management practices holding back middle-income countries? The authors look at evidence for private firms and public organisations in India - in manufacturing, retail, healthcare and education.

John Van Reenen sketches the evolution of CEP research on the drivers of productivity growth - and its impact on policies to foster competition.

Economists have long puzzled over the astounding differences in productivity between firms and countries. For example, looking at disaggregated data on U.S. manufacturing industries, Syverson (2004a) found that plants at the 90th percentile produced four times as much as the plant in the 10th...

A classic question in industrial organization is whether competition raises productivity and if so, through what mechanism? I discuss recent empirical evidence from both large-scale databases and specific industries which suggests that tougher competition does indeed raise productivity and one...

We use an innovative methodology to measure management practices in over 300 manufacturing firms in the UK. We then match this management data to production and energy usage information for establishments owned by these firms. We find that establishments in better managed firms are significantly...

We present a survey of recent contributions in the empirical organizational economics, focusing on management practices and decentralization. Productivity dispersion between firms and countries has motivated the improved measurement of firm organization across industries and countries. There...