We have conducted the first survey on management practices in transition countries. We found that Central Asian transition countries, such as Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, have on average very poor management practices. Their average scores are below emerging countries such as Brazil, China and...

We apply program evaluation methods to analyze the effectiveness of two types of preferential regional policy programs in China's manufacturing sector. Economic and Technological Development Zones (ETDZs) aim to facilitate firms' internationalization strategies. Science and Technology Industrial...

We present a model in which the owner of the firm enjoys a private benefit from developing a personal relationship with the executives. This may lead the owner to retain a senior executive in office even though a more productive replacement is available. The model shows that the private returns...

Using firm-level data for the UK, we investigate the link between firms’ financial health, borrowing ratio and export exit, paying special attention to the recent financial crisis. Our results show that deterioration in the financial position of firms has increased the hazard of export exit...

We suggest a parsimonious dynamic agency model in which workers have status concerns. A firm is a promotion hierarchy in which a worker’s status depends on past performance. We investigate the optimality of two types of promotion hierarchies: (i) internal labor markets, in which agents have a...

What is the relationship between product prices and vertical integration? While the literature has focused on how integration affects prices, this paper shows that prices can affect integration. Many theories in organizational economics and industrial organization posit that integration, while...

We examine the allocation of scarce attention in team production. Each team member is in charge of a specialized task, which must be adapted to a privately observed shock and coordinated with other tasks. Coordination requires that agents pay attention to each other, but attention is in limited...

Buying frenzies in which a firm intentionally undersupplies a product during its initial launch phase are a common practice within several industries such as electronics (cell phones, video games, game consoles), luxury cars, and fashion goods. We develop a dynamic model of buying frenzies that...

This paper establishes a causal effect of product market competition on various characteristics of organizational design. Using a unique panel dataset on firm hierarchies of large U.S. firms (1986-1999) and a quasi-natural experiment (trade liberalization), we find that increasing competition...

We examine the differential effects of financial status and exporting activity on the likelihood of survival for firms in the UK and France - two countries with different financial systems. We aim to answer two main questions: What is the direct impact of financial characteristics and different...