The theory of the rm suggests that firms can respond to poor contract enforcement by vertically integrating their production process. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether firms' integration opportunities affect the way institutions determine international trade patterns. We find that...

We explore the nature of Business Groups, that is network-like forms of hierarchical organization between legally autonomous firms spanning both within and across national borders. Exploiting a unique dataset of 270,474 headquarters controlling more than 1,500,000 (domestic and foreign)...

Business Groups collect and coordinate legally autonomous firms spanning both within and across national borders . They represent a lion's share of value added generation on a world scale, and yet they received little attention in economics literature, probably due to a lack of detailed data. In...

The theory of the firm suggests that firms can respond to poor contract enforcement by vertically integrating their production process. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether firms' integration opportunities affect the way contract enforcement institutions determine international trade...

Agency problems in inter-firm trading relationships are severe in developing and transitional economies because of the limited decentralized information that can support contract enforcement and because the timing of intermediate goods production and payment differ. We derive the consequences...

This paper studies how firms reorganize following diversification. We propose that firms use outsourcing, or vertical dis-integration, to reduce scope-induced governance costs that arise following diversification. We also consider the source of scope diseconomies, and argue that different...

The objective of this study is to contribute for the theoretical development of vertical coordination in productive systems, shaping the concept of 'stability and diffusion of contractual arrangements'. Considering the well-accepted statement of efficient alignment between transaction...

This paper develops and applies a test of the property rights theory of the firm in the context of global input sourcing. We use the model by Pol Antràs and Elhanan Helpman, “Global Sourcing,” Journal of Political Economy, 112:3 (2004), 552-80, to derive a new prediction regarding how the...

The theory of the firm suggests that firms can respond to poor contract enforcement by vertically integrating their production process. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether firms' integration opportunities affect the way institutions determine international trade patterns. We find...

We investigate the link between productivity of firms and their sourcing behavior. Following Antràs & Helpman (2004) we distinguish between domestic and foreign sourcing, as well as between outsourcing and vertical integration. A firm's choice is driven by a hold-up problem caused by lack of...