 Come together: firm boundaries and delegationLaura Alfaro, Nicholas Bloom, Paola Conconi, Harald Fadinger, Patrick Legros, Andrew F. Newman, Raffaella Sadun and John van Reenen CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE Abstract: We jointly study firm boundaries and the allocation of decision rights within them by confronting an incomplete-contracts model with data on vertical integration and delegation for thousands of firms around the world. Integration has an option value: it confers authority to delegate or centralize decision rights, depending on who can best solve problems that arise in the course of an uncertain production process. The model can explain why more vertically integrated firms tend to delegate more, as observed in our data. In line with the model's predictions, we find that firms are more likely to integrate suppliers that produce more valuable inputs and operate in industries with more dispersed productivity, and that firms delegate more decisions to integrated suppliers that produce more valuable inputs and operate in more productive industries. Keywords: integration; delegation; uncertainty; real options; supply assurance (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp1547 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE |
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