We study an agency model with vertical hierarchy - the principal, the prime-agent and the sub-agent. The principal faces a project that needs both agents' services. Due to costly communication, the principal receives a report only from the prime-agent, who receives a report from the sub-agent....

This paper explores why competing firms can choose to outsource to an external common supplier that does not have a cost advantage in input production. The supplier, through its contract offers, manages to generate asymmetry, to alter product market competition, and to extract profits from the...

Casual observation suggests that cultural differences play an important role in business transactions, yet systematic evidence on this relationship is scarce. This paper provides a novel investigation of the effect of cultural distance on multinational firms' decisions to integrate their...

The problem of textile industry started with the economic recession of the 1980s and was aggravated by globalization coupled with poor infrastructure and Nigerians perception of made in Nigeria goods. This helped the foreign multi-national textile manufacturing giants to dominate Nigeria textile...

Climate change poses a key challenge for biodiversity conservation. Conservation agencies, in particular, have to decide where to carry out conservation measures in a landscape to enable species to move with climate change. Moreover, they can choose two main governance modes: (1) buy land to...

Chapter 1: Introduction -- Part 1: Recognising relationships between adversity, trauma and crime -- Chapter 2: Adversity and trauma: realising the basics -- Chapter 3: Recognising the relationships between trauma and offending -- Chapter 4: Recognising the significance of the past: developmental...

In this paper we examine the reduction in the relative employment and wages of unskilled workers in the U.S. during the 1980's. We argue that a contributing factor to this decline was rising imports reflecting the outsourcing of production activities. In a theoretical model, we show that any...

When should a government provide a service inhouse and when should it contract out provision? We develop a model in which the provider can invest in improving the quality of service or reducing cost. If contracts are incomplete, the private provider has a stronger incentive to engage in both...

Explaining patterns of asset ownership in the economy is a central goal of both organizational economics and industrial organization. We develop a model of asset ownership in trucking, which we test by examining how the adoption of different classes of on-board computers (OBCs) between 1987 and...

This paper studies how the Intellectual Property Right (IPR) regime in destination countries influences the way multinationals structure the international organization of their production. In particular, we explore how multinationals divide tasks of different complexities across countries with...

In einer agilen und sich stetig weiterentwickelnden Umgebung sind Unternehmen gefordert, ihre Geschäftsprozesse und -modelle ständig zu hinterfragen, anzupassen und weiterzuentwickeln. Eine zentrale Überlegung in diesem Kontext stellt auch in der Veranstaltungsbranche die Frage nach der...

We consider a multi-item buyer's make versus buy decision. The buyer sells two substitutable products with uncertain demand. Each product requires a different item, which the buyer procures from two separate suppliers (one for each item) who offer quantity-payment contracts under asymmetric...

Purpose: Make-or-buy decisions represent a critical dilemma faced by many firms. The appropriate decision between designing and manufacturing parts or services in-house, buying them from external providers or combining both is a fundamental firm process. This paper seeks to address this question...

We present a real options model of a firm's make-or-buy decision under demand uncertainty. "Making" is subject to decreasing returns to scale, fixed costs and capital investment. "Buying" happens at a fixed price and requires no investment. Three distinct procurement regimes endogenously arise:...

Many small firms lack the finance and marketing skills needed for firm growth. The standard approach in many business support programs is to attempt to train the entrepreneur to develop these skills, through classroom-based training or personalized consulting. However, rather than requiring the...

The problem of textile industry started with the economic recession of the 1980s and was aggravated by globalization coupled with poor infrastructure and Nigerians perception of made in Nigeria goods. This helped the foreign multi-national textile manufacturing giants to dominate Nigeria textile...

We examine the within- and across-firm shipment decisions of tens of thousands of goods-producing and distributing establishments. This allows us to quantify the normally unobservable forces that determine firm boundaries; which transactions are mediated by ownership control, as opposed to...

Products often bundle together many functions e.g., smartphones. The firm develops the big idea (which functions to bundle) and then chooses one supplier per function. We develop a model featuring holdup in which the firm's bargaining power declines in the number of suppliers. Greater scope as...

We examine the within- and across-firm shipment decisions of tens of thousands of goods-producing and goods-distributing establishments. This allows us to quantify the normally unobservable forces that determine firm boundaries; that is, which transactions are mediated by ownership control, as...

About 40% of employment in manufacturing is in services functions. This paper develops a measure of narrow outsourcing, matching services functions performed by workers inside manufacturing firms to the same services functions provided by outside suppliers. Narrow outsourcing is entered into...

Products often bundle together many functions e.g., smartphones. The firm develops the big idea (which functions to bundle) and then chooses one supplier per function. We develop a model featuring holdup in which the firm's bargaining power declines in the number of suppliers. Greater scope as...

Onsite-Werkverträge in der Warenverräumung gehen im Einzelhandel zuweilen mit gravierenden Problemen für den Auftraggeber einher. Trotzdem nimmt das Management diese Werkverträge nicht automatisch zurück. Es bedarf eines Akteurs wie des (Gesamt-)Betriebsrats, der die Rücknahme vorantreibt....

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...

This paper examines factors explaining subcontracting decisions in the construction industry. Rather than the more common cross-sectional analyses, we use panel data to evaluate the influence of all relevant variables. We design and use a new index of the closeness to small numbers situations to...