We make randomized firm-to-firm referrals between 700 supplier and client firms in the industry producing the Chinese writing brush. Subsidized referrals lead to subsequent transactions and a partial crowding out of prior partners; information-only referrals have no effect. The referrals...

In principle, firms in developing countries benefit from the fact that advanced technologies and products have already been developed in industrialized countries and can simply be adopted, a process often referred to as industrial upgrading. But for many firms this advantage remains elusive....

We study how government policies and corporate commitments to decarbonize interact under two externalities: environmental damages and green innovation spillovers. Unconstrained carbon taxes and innovation subsidies could achieve first-best outcomes, but when government policies face constraints,...

This paper examines technology sophistication in establishments. To comprehensively measure technology sophistication, we create a grid that covers key business functions and the technologies used to conduct them. Analyzing data from over 21,000 establishments in 15 countries, we find that the...

We study the propagation of nominal shocks in a dispersed information economy where firms learn from and respond to information generated by their activities in product and factor markets. We prove the existence of a "Hayekian benchmark", defined by conditions under which imperfect information...

Racial social isolation within and across workplaces may reduce firm productivity. We provide descriptive evidence that African-Americans feel socially isolated from Whites. To test whether isolation affects productivity, we estimate models of Total Factor Productivity for manufacturing firms...

I provide a rigorous framework for accounting for corporate greenhouse gas emissions, based on the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. I show that only Scope 1 emissions are of interest from a national policy perspective: that emissions in Scopes 2 and 3 are duplicative, and that downstream Scope 3...

Combining confidential Census worker and firm data, we find three key results. First, employees at more productive firms earn higher pay at all earnings levels. Second, this pay-productivity relationship strengthens with seniority, doubling from an elasticity of 0.07 for pay on productivity for...

Heterogeneous firm models are ubiquitous in modern macroeconomics. We revisit a central feature of these models: the idiosyncratic shock process faced by firms. Using a large representative firm-level dataset, we document nonparametrically that the common assumption, a Gaussian AR(1) shock...

Researchers often test firm conduct models using pass-through regressions or instrumental variables (IV) methods. The former has limited applicability; the latter relies on potentially irrelevant instruments. We show the falsifiable restriction underlying the IV method generalizes the...