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Interfirm Relationships and Business Performance

Jing Cai and Adam Szeidl

Natural Field Experiments from The Field Experiments Website

Abstract: We organize regular business meetings for randomly selected managers of young Chinese firms to study the effect of business networks on firm performance. We randomize 2,800 managers into several groups that hold monthly meetings for one year, and a "no-meetings" control group. We find that: (1) The meetings increase firm revenue by 7.8 percentage points, and also significantly increase profit, a management score, employment, and the number of business partners; (2) These effects persist one year after the conclusion of the meetings; and (3) Firms randomized to have better peers exhibit higher growth. We exploit additional interventions to document concrete channels: (4) Peers share exogenous business-relevant information, particularly when they are not competitors, showing that the meetings facilitate learning; (5) Managers create more business partnerships in the regular than in other one-time meetings, showing that the meetings improve firm-to-firm matching.

Date: 2016
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-cse, nep-hrm, nep-sbm and nep-tid
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Interfirm Relationships and Business Performance (2018) Downloads
Working Paper: Interfirm Relationships and Business Performance_ (2017) Downloads
Working Paper: Interfirm Relationships and Business Performance (2016) Downloads
Working Paper: Interfirm Relationships and Business Performance (2016) Downloads
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