The uniform pricing puzzle for vertically differentiated products states that a monopolist sells high and low quality products at the same price despite the fact that quality is perfectly observable and that there are no significant costs of adjusting prices. The puzzle is relevant for movies,...

We utilize a unique database from a large legal services provider to examine how service quality responds to the firm's available capacity and workload, and to the nature of the firm-client relationship. We develop empirical measures of both the (internal) level of resources available to the...

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 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...

A principal chooses one of n=2 projects or an outside option. An agent is privately informed about the projects' benefits and shares the principal's preferences except for not internalizing her value from the outside option. We show that strategic communication is characterized by pandering: the...

This paper examines whether the export decision of firms is affected by their ownership structure, specifically it looks at whether family control is an obstacle to entering foreign markets. The underlying assumption is that family firms are risk averse. Risk aversion may be an obstacle to...

Exit of venture-backed firms often takes place through sales to large incumbent firms. We show that in such an environment, venture-backed firms have a stronger incentive to develop basic innovations into commercialized innovations than incumbent firms, due to strategic product market effects....

This paper empirically explores standard-setting organizations’ policy choices. Consistent with Lerner-Tirole (2006), we find (a) a negative relationship between the extent to which an SSO is oriented to technology sponsors and the concession level required of sponsors and (b) a positive...

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 exploit time variation in the degree of development of local credit markets and matched employer-employee data to assess the role of the firm as an internal credit market. In less developed local credit markets firms can offer a flatter wage-tenure profile than firms in more developed credit...