Vertical Integration and Distance to Frontier

Vertical Integration and Distance to Frontier

We construct a model where the equilibrium organization of firms changes as an economy approaches the world technology frontier. In vertically integrated firms, owners (managers) have to spend time both on production and innovation activities, and this creates managerial overload, and discourages innovation. Outsourcing of some production activities mitigates the managerial overload, but create...

Distance to Frontier, Selection, and Economic Growth

We analyze an economy where firms undertake both innovation and adoption of technologies from the world technology frontier. The selection of high-skill managers and firms is more important for innovation than for adoption. As the economy approaches the frontier, selection becomes more important. Countries at early stages of development pursue an investment-based strategy, which relies on exist...

Distance to Frontier and Composition of Human Capital", mimeo HarvardUCL

Vertical Integration and Production

We use two very large datasets to obtain some of the first systematic micro evidence on how production in vertically integrated firms differs from that of unlinked producers in the same industries. The Economic Census lets us observe virtually every establishment in the private economy, and crucially, the organizational structures of the firms that own them. The Commodity Flow Survey microdata ...

Vertical Integration and Operational Flexibility

The main aim of the paper is to highlight the relation between flexibility and vertical integration. To this purpose, we go through the selection of the optimal degree of vertical disintegration of a flexible firm which operates in a dynamic uncertain environment. The enterprise we model enjoys flexibility since it can switch from a certain amount of disintegration to vertical integration and v...