We collect data on operations, targets and human resources management practices in over 1,800 schools educating 15-year-olds in 8 countries. Overall, we show that higher management quality is strongly associated with better educational outcomes. The UK, Sweden, Canada and the US obtain the...

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...

We analyse the causal impact of competition on managerial quality and hospital performance. To address the endogeneity of market structure we analyse the English public hospital sector where entry and exit are controlled by the central government. Because closing hospitals in areas where the...

We have conducted the first survey on management practices in transition countries. We found that Central Asian transition countries, such as Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, have on average very poor management practices. Their average scores are below emerging countries such as Brazil, China and...

We present a survey of recent contributions in empirical organizational economics, focusing on management practices and decentralization. Productivity dispersion between firms and countries has motivated the improved measurement of firm organization across industries and countries. There appears...

For the last decade we have been using double-blind survey techniques and randomized sampling to construct management data on over 10,000 organizations across twenty countries. On average, we find that in manufacturing American, Japanese, and German firms are the best managed. Firms in...

US productivity growth accelerated after 1995 (unlike Europe's), particularly in sectors that intensively use information technologies (IT). Using two new micro panel datasets we show that US multinationals operating in Europe also experienced a "productivity miracle." US multinationals obtained...

When will reducing trade barriers against a low wage country cause innovation to increase in high wage regions like the US or EU? We develop a model where factors of production have costs of adjustment and so are partially "trapped" in producing old goods. Trade liberalization with a low wage...

This paper describes the evolution of the tax treatment of investment in R&D in Australia, Canada, France, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Japan and the USA between 1979 and 1994. Estimates of the cost of R&D capital are provided and the methodology used is contrasted with other ones used in the...

In this chapter we examine the relationship between Human Resource Management (HRM) and productivity. HRM includes incentive pay (individual and group) as well as many nonpay aspects of the employment relationship such as matching (hiring and firing) and work organization (e.g. teams, autonomy)....