Studies have found the impact of foreign direct investments (FDI) on productivity growth to be firm-industry-host economy specific. However, the impact of FDI may differ with the existing market conditions in the economy and also with respect to the source of the FDI. The paper examines the impact of FDI on productivity growth of the Indian industry in the period of low market demand conditions...

Risk is inherent to the pursuit of opportunity. This paper draws on the recent literature and looks at the risks and opportunities firms and their workers face in the global value chains. First, it examines the sharing mechanisms that firms provide from the national and global perspectives; second, it takes a closer look at the new opportunities and challenges for firms and individuals in the g...

We empirically study how the interplay between entry and subcontracting choices is affected by the use of different auctions formats in public procurement. The differencein-differences strategy used exploits a dataset of auctions for public works run alternately under first price and average bid auctions. We find that the use of first price auctions causes a marked decline in both entry and sub...

Consider trade conducted via a platform, such as an online app store or a farmers market. The quality sellers choose for their products affects the surplus trade generates. Because the platform’s profit depends on that surplus, the platform can have an incentive to regulate quality. This is true even if quality is observable at time of purchase or if sellers can develop reputations concerning q...

We explain why European trucking carriers are much smaller and rely more heavily on owner-operators (as opposed to employee drivers) than their US counterparts. Our analysis begins by ruling out differences in technology as the source of those disparities and confirms that standard hypotheses in organizational economics, which have been shown to explain the choice of organizational form in US i...

The institutions of productive systems are structured by mutual interests and relative power. Securing mutually beneficial cooperation in production requires resolving distributional differences. These objectives are secured in liberal economic theory by the working of markets which mediate the power of individuals and reward individual success. The centrality of individuals and hierarchies in ...

We analyse competition between two retailers of broadband access when they differ in their ability to offer value-added services. One retailer is vertically integrated and controls the input-market for local access. This firm invests to increase the input quality (upgrading to broadband) before an access price regulation is set. We first show that access price regulation may lower consumer surp...

We analyze in an incomplete contracts model whether a supplier should be integrated if in addition to his investment level he chooses the degree of relationship specificity. A basic trade-off arises: While non-integration leads to higher investment incentives, potential synergies are foregone. Hence, integration can be optimal even though only the supplier makes an investment decision. This may...