Measuring and Explaining Management PracticesAcross Firms and Countries

We use an innovative survey tool to collect management practice data from 732 medium sizedmanufacturing firms in the US, France, Germany and the UK. These measures of managerialpractice are strongly associated with productivity, profitability, Tobin’s Q, sales growth and survivalrates. Management practices also display significant cross-country differences with US firms onaverage better managed than European firms, and significant within-country differences with a longtail of extremely badly managed firms. We find this is due to: (i) different levels of product marketcompetition, which is associated with better management; and (ii) family firms passing managementcontrol down to the eldest sons (primo geniture), with is associated with worse management.European firms report lower levels of competition, while French and British firms also reportsubstantially higher levels of primo geniture due to the influence of Norman legal origin.[...]