Does Competition Raise Productivity Through Improving Management Quality?

John van Reenen

CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

Abstract: A classic question in industrial organization is whether competition raises productivity and if so, through what mechanism? I discuss recent empirical evidence from both large-scale databases and specific industries which suggests that tougher competition does indeed raise productivity and one of the main mechanisms is through improving management practices. To establish this, I report on new research seeking to quantify management. I relate this to theoretical perspectives on the economics of competition and management, arguing that management should be seen at least in part as a transferable technology. A range of recent econometric studies suggest that (i) competition increases management quality and (ii) improved management quality boosts productivity.

Keywords: management; productivity; organization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L2 M2 O32 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-com, nep-eff, nep-hrm and nep-ind
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1036.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Does competition raise productivity through improving management quality? (2011)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp1036

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().