Global value chains have fundamentally transformed international trade and development in recent decades. We use matched firm-level customs and manufacturing survey data, together with Input-Output tables for China, to examine how Chinese firms position themselves in global production lines and...

This paper explores why competing firms can choose to outsource to an external common supplier that does not have a cost advantage in input production. The supplier, through its contract offers, manages to generate asymmetry, to alter product market competition, and to extract profits from the...

Production processes are increasingly organized in international value-chain networks. The involved firms can be operating at arm’s length or be vertically integrated. Both the incidence and the direction of integration (backward or forward in the value chain) depend on specific...

We study ex post outsourcing of production in an imperfectly discriminating contest, interpreted here as a research tournament or a procurement contest for being awarded some production contract. We find that the possibility of outsourcing increases competition between the contestants, leading...

Production processes are increasingly organized in international value-chain networks. The involved firms can be operating at arm’s length or be vertically integrated. Both the incidence and the direction of integration (backward or forward in the value chain) depend on specific...

Global value chains have fundamentally transformed international trade and development in recent decades. We use matched firm-level customs and manufacturing survey data, together with Input-Output tables for China, to examine how Chinese firms position themselves in global production lines and...

Our study puts special attention to the fact that R&D cooperations in the pharmaceutical industry are formed at different stages throughout the drug development process. We study if the timing to engage in R&D cooperations in the pharmaceutical industry has different impacts on the technology...

We explore the incentives of a vertically integrated incumbent firm to license the production technology of its core input to an external firm, transforming the licensee into its input supplier. We find that the incumbent opts for licensing even when licensing also transforms the licensee into...

We study the holdup problem in repeated transactions between a seller and a buyer such that the seller makes relation-specific investments in each period. We show that where, under spot transaction, formal contracts have no value because of the cooperative nature of investment, writing a simple...

Can formal contracts help resolving the holdup problem? We address this important question by studying the holdup problem in repeated transactions between a seller and a buyer in which the seller can make relation-specific investments in each period. In contrast to previous findings, we...