Skip to main content

Trade and management

Nicholas Bloom, Kalina Manova, Stephen Teng Sun, John Van Reenen and Zhihong Yu


?We study how management practices shape export performance using matched production-trade-management data for Chinese and American firms and a randomized control trial in India. Better-managed firms are more likely to export, sell more products to more destinations, and earn higher export revenues and profits. They export higher-quality products at higher prices and lower quality-adjusted prices. They import a wider range of inputs and inputs of higher quality and price, from more advanced countries. We rationalize these patterns with a heterogeneous-firm model in which effective management improves performance by raising production efficiency and quality capacity. ? 2019 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.


1 May 2021


The Review of Economics and Statistics 103(3) , pp.443-460, 2021


DOI: 10.1162/rest_a_00925

https://direct.mit.edu/rest/article-abstract/103/3/443/97684/Trade-and-Management

This Journal article is published under the centre's Growth programme.