Many founding teams of new firms form at a common employer. We model team formation and the entry of employee spinoffs by extending the Jovanovic (1979) theory of job matching and employer learning. In our social-capital model employees learn about their colleagues' characteristics at a faster...

We argue that several easily identifiable structural features constitute the key ingredients of effective state bureaucracies and should help to predict ratings of bureaucratic performance: competitive salaries, internal promotion and career stability, and meritocratic recruitment. We collect a...

When trade involves differentiated products, preferential ties to a group settled abroad facilitate an exporter's entry into the foreign market by providing information and access to distribution channels. This contrasts with the difficulties experienced by an unattached producer unfamiliar with...

Motivated by evidence on the importance of incomplete information and networks in international trade, we investigate the supply of network intermediation. We build a general-equilibrium model in which agents with networks of foreign contacts either can use their networks themselves in support...

What determines the boundary of multinational firms? According to Williamson (1975), a potential rationale for vertical integration is to facilitate adaptation in a world where uncertainty is resolved over time. This paper offers the first empirical analysis of the impact of adaptation on the...