This discussion paper resulted in a publication in the <A href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jems.12037/abstract">Journal of Economics & Management Strategy</A>. Organization differ in the degree to which they differentiate employees by ability. We analyse how the effect of differentiation on employee morale may explain this variation. By comparing...</a>

We model entrepreneurship and the emergence of firms as a result of simultaneous bidding for labor services among heterogeneousagents. Unique to our approach is that occupational choices, jobmatching and organizational forms are determined simultaneously, sothat the opportunity costs of...

See also F.A.G. den Butter, R. Hayat (2013), Trade between China and the Netherlands: a case study of trade in tasks, <I>Journal of Chinese Economic and Foreign Trade Studies</I>, 6(3), 178-191. <P> During the last decades, the growth of trade between China and the Netherlands has been larger than the...</p></i>

This era of globalisation is characterized by an ongoing international fragmentation of production where the supply chain is split up in more and more parts. The traditional Ricardian theory of trade in products governed by comparative advantages is replaced by a modern theory of trade in tasks....

This paper examines how the concept of industrial district, widely recognised as an Italian construct, took shape. It assesses to what extent the concept was tailored to fit the peculiar trait of the Italian economic development, as is claimed by some international authors, and to what extent it...

World agricultural and food markets have become rather complicated during recent years as a result of increasing importance of food safety standards, information flow and coordination between firms and widespread use of improved information technology, transition from product controls to process...

Firms in the same industry can differ in measured productivity by multiples of 3. Griliches (1957) suggests one explanation: the quality of inputs differs across firms. We add labor market history variables such as experience and firm and industry tenure, as well as general human capital...

Available statistics tell us little about the economic consequences of increasing global dispersion of production processes. In order to shed light on the issue, we perform grass roots detective work to uncover the geography of value added in the case of a Nokia N95 smartphone circa 2007. The...

Using data from 1,226 matches played over 18 seasons, we analyse match attendances in the group stages of the European Rugby Cup (ERC). We find that short-run (match) uncertainty had little effect on attendances. This finding is significant as the ERC has been replaced by a new competition which...

Manufacturing industries in developed countries have been experiencing profound changes over the last decade. Production of inputs and commodity goods has been increasingly outsourced to emerging countries’ low-wage suppliers, thus nurturing an unprecedented process of ‘global shifts’....