This paper develops and applies a test of the property rights theory of the firm in the context of global input sourcing. We use the model by Pol Antràs and Elhanan Helpman, “Global Sourcing,” Journal of Political Economy, 112:3 (2004), 552-80, to derive a new prediction regarding how the...

Over the last decades, the internationalization of the value chain has allowed firms to exploit cross-country differences in environmental and labor regulation (and enforcement) in ways that have led to a large number of NGO campaigns and consumer boycotts criticizing ‘unethical’ practices....

We study the behavior of a firm that consistently maximizes a misspecified profit function. We provide an equilibrium concept where the misspecification error remains undetected. We examine the uniqueness and stability of the equilibria. The model of the price-taking firm belongs to this class....

Casual observation suggests that cultural differences play an important role in business transactions, yet systematic evidence on this relationship is scarce. This paper provides a novel investigation of the effect of cultural distance on multinational firms’ decisions to integrate their...

Management research has long focused on the theory of the firm, studying for-profit organizations that produce privately owned resources based on central authority and within well-defined boundaries. In recent times, a new kind of enterprise has emerged that we call Community Enterprises. They...

According to conventional wisdom, multinational firms undertake vertical FDI in order to take advantage of cross-border factor cost differences and source the inputs from abroad at better terms. Recent empirical findings though document that this is not always the case. We provide theoretical...

This paper develops and applies a test of the property rights theory of the firm in the context of global input sourcing. We use the model by Pol Antràs and Elhanan Helpman, “Global Sourcing," Journal of Political Economy, 112:3 (2004), 552-80, to derive a new prediction regarding how the...

A service provider firm in an outsourcing relationship is distinct from a typical firm because it is not a stand alone organization and fits somewhere in between the value chain of its client's business. Thus, conventional factors like wages, capital, rent, energy consumption cannot...

We investigate the link between productivity of firms and their sourcing behavior. Following Antràs & Helpman (2004) we distinguish between domestic and foreign sourcing, as well as between outsourcing and vertical integration. A firm’s choice is driven by a hold-up problem caused by lack of...

What happens to firms' organizational structure when they are hit by a negative shock? By matching employer-employee data with firm loans and bank balance sheets, I study firms' reactions to a credit shock–the global financial crisis—and compare it to a trade shock—the entry of China in...