The firm's stock of human capital is an important determinant of its ability to innovate. As such, any increase in this stock through firm-sponsored training might lead to more innovation. We test this hypothesis using detailed data on firms' human capital investments and innovation performance,...

According to New Institutional Economics, two or more individuals will found an organization, if it leads to a benefit compared to market allocation. A natural consequence will then be internal rent seeking. We discuss the interrelation between profits, rent seeking and the foundation of...

This paper discusses the optimal firm size in the presence of influence activities, and the level of individual rent-seeking dependent on the economic situation of the firm. Since firm size has a discouraging effect on the level of individual rent-seeking but also a quantity effect as the number...

Using detailed survey data on management practices, this paper uses recent advances in unconditional quantile analysis to study the changes in the within country distribution of management quality associated with country convergence to the managerial frontier. It then decomposes the contribution...

We collect data on operations, targets and human resources management practices in over 1,800 schools educating 15-year-olds in eight countries. Overall, we show that higher management quality is strongly associated with better educational outcomes. The UK, Sweden, Canada and the US obtain the...

Interest in prediction markets has increased in the last decade, driven in part by the hope that these markets will prove to be valuable tools in forecasting, decision-making and risk management - in both the public and private sectors. This paper outlines five open questions in the literature,...

We study the effects of policy reforms in the South on the decisions of intrafirm and arm's length production transfers by Northern firms. We show theoretically that relaxing ownership controls and improving contract enforcement can induce multinational companies to expand product varieties to...

This study is a review of the recent trends in development economics research. The focus is on the development in the recent decades as a result of increased globalization of knowledge, technologies and economies. In particular I look at the development in a number area where similar trends are...

This paper presents a dynamic model that analyzes how firms’ expectations with regards to technological change influence the demand for outsourcing. We show that outsourcing becomes more beneficial to the firm when technology is changing rapidly. As the pace of innovations in production...

Our paper investigates the link between outsourcing and wages utilising a large household panel and combining it with industry level information on industries’ outsourcing activities from input-output tables. By doing so we can arguably overcome the potential endogeneity bias as well as other...