The industrial organization of developing countries is characterized by the pervasive use of subcontracting arrangements among small, financially constrained firms. This paper asks whether vertical integration relaxes those financial constraints. It shows that vertical integration trades off the...

When procurement contracts are incomplete, they are frequently changed after the contract is awarded to the lowest bidder. This results in a final cost that differs from the initial price, and may involve significant transaction costs due to renegotiation. We propose a stylized model of bidding...

There are more and more industries in which firms are specialized in the production of a component of the final good. This is especially true in high-tech industries. The basic question is why don't these firms merge? We paradoxically show that industries which are typical candidates for...

In a world where corporate boards are not required by law, I identify a governance and a distribute motive for board establishment and board composition. I investigate the presence of these motives in a sample of 23.000+ closely held corporations. Board frequency increases with more owners, if...

This study empirically investigates if competition’s impact on firm performance depends on the ownership structure. Our results show that an increase in import competition has a positive effect on firms with concentrated ownership and a negative effect on firms with dispersed ownership,...

This paper presents new evidence on tradeinduced automation in manufacturing firms using unique data combining a retrospective survey that we have assembled with register data for 2005-2010. In particular, we establish a causal effect where firms that have specialized in product types for which...

This paper investigates the determinants of vertical integration. We first derive a number of predictions regarding the relationship between technology intensity and vertical integration from a simple model with nancial imperfections andincomplete contracts. Then, we investigate these...

Using a general two-stage framework, this paper gives sufficient conditions for increasing competition to have negative or positive effects on R&D-investment, respectively. Both possibilities arise in plausible situations, even if one uses relatively narrow definitions of increasing competition....

Novel early stage ideas face uncertainty on the expertise needed to elaborate them, which creates a need to circulate them widely to find a match. Yet as information is not excludable, shared ideas may be stolen, reducing incentives to innovate. Still, in idea-rich environments inventors may...

We develop a product market theory that explains why firms provide their workers with skills that are sufficiently general to be potentially useful for competitors. We consider a model where firms first decide whether to invest in industry-specific human capital, then make wage offers for each...