We study the impact of service attributes (warranty length, after-sales service quality) on consumer demand in the U.S. automobile industry, examining the presence of complementarities/substitution between service attributes and product quality. Our results estimate a median willingness to pay...

Product launch - an event when a new product debuts for production in a plant - is an important phase in product development. But launches disrupt manufacturing operations resulting in productivity losses. Using data from North-American automotive plants from years 1999-2007, we estimate that a...

We study production networks of automotive assembly plants to shed new light on the impact of flexibility on plant productivity. We observe that the contemporary manufacturing networks of automotive assembly plants of three US companies (Chrysler, Ford and General Motors) have become less...

The ability to manufacture several products on the same production line and switch seamlessly among them allows a firm to both hedge against demand uncertainty and respond to competition. In this paper, we empirically analyze the deployment of manufacturing flexibility in the North American...