This paper establishes a causal effect of competition from trade liberalization on various characteristics of organizational design. We exploit a unique panel dataset on firm hierarchies (1986-1999) of large U.S. firms and find that increasing competition leads firms to become flatter, i.e., (i)...

In most organizations, promotions often require self-nomination and competition among applicants. However, research on gender differences in preferences for competition suggests that this process might result in fewer women choosing to participate. We study whether changing promotion schemes...