Results

Journal article

PNAS:

The international empirics of management

A country's national income broadly depends on the quantity and quality of workers and capital. But how well these factors are managed within and between firms may be a key determinant of a country's productivity and its...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Good management practices are great for productivity ... as well as profit shifting

Following the release of the Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers, there has been renewed research into profit shifting by multinational firms. This column utilises a novel dataset to show that well-managed subsidiaries...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics: Forthcoming

Organizational capacity and profit shifting

Good organizational capacity drives productivity and potential taxable profits, but may also enable multinationals (MNEs) to more efficiently re-allocate profits across tax jurisdictions, lowering actual taxable profits....Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal: Forthcoming

Personnel Management and School Productivity: Evidence from India

This paper uses new data to study school management and productivity in India. We report five main results. First, management quality in public schools is low, and -2 standard deviations below high-income countries with ...Read more...

Journal article

Labour Economics:

The effect of preserving job matches during a crisis

It is generally difficult to measure the importance of preserving worker-firm relationships, particularly for low-wage jobs that involve general skills. The COVID-19 pandemic led to the sudden and seemingly temporary dis...Read more...

Blog

INSEAD Knowledge:

Covid-19 furloughs helped firms not just survive, but thrive

Morten Bennedsen, Birthe Larsen, Ian Schmutte and Daniela Scur discuss how the furlough schemes implemented during the pandemic yielded benefits even after Covid-19 restrictions ended and helped firms thrive....Read more...

Journal article

Management Science:

Building a Productive Workforce: The Role of Structured Management Practices

In an influential study, Bender et al. [Bender S, Bloom N, Card D, Van Reenen J, Wolter S (2018) Management practices, workforce selection, and productivity. J. Labor Econom. 36(S1):S371-S409] document consistent relatio...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Organizational capacity and profit shifting

Good organizational capacity drives productivity and potential taxable profits but may also enable multinationals (MNEs) to more efficiently re-allocate profits across tax jurisdictions, lowering actual taxable profits. ...Read more...

Journal article

Oxford Review of Economic Policy:

The World Management Survey at 18: Lessons and the way forward

Understanding how differences in management 'best practices' affect organizational outcomes has been a focus of both theoretical and empirical work in the fields of management, sociology, economics, and public policy. Th...Read more...

Blog

LSE Covid-19:

LSE Festival 2021: Many of us will return to offices - but not for the whole week

As the pandemic drags on, employers have got better at organising their staff to work from home, says Daniela Scur (Cornell University and LSE). Not all will return to the office, and many will never go back to the five-...Read more...

Journal article

Oxford Review of Economic Policy:

Management practices and public policy: An overview

This paper introduces and summarizes this issue of the Oxford Review of Economic Policy, on management practices. We outline key concepts in the empirical study of structured management practices, then summarize each of ...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

Preserving job matches during the Covid-19 pandemic: firm-level evidence on the role of government aid

We analyze the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and government policies on firms’ aid takeup, layoff and furlough decisions. We collect new survey data for 10,642 small, medium and large Danish firms, and match to governm...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Structured management: how firms can hire and keep the best people

Firms' decisions about whom to hire and fire have big effects, not only on their own bottom line but also on the functioning of the labour market and the performance of the whole economy. Analysis of Brazilian data by Da...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Measuring and explaining management in schools: new approaches using public data

Why do some students learn more in some schools than others? One consideration receiving growing attention is school management. To study this, researchers need to be able to measure school management accurately and chea...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Building a productive workforce: the role of structured management practices

Firms’ hiring and firing decisions affect the entire labor market. Managers often make these decisions, yet the effects of management on labor allocation remains largely unexplored. To study the relationship between a fi...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Family firms: the problem of second-generation bosses

Although family firms are widely praised as the ‘backbone of the economy’, their productivity is often hampered by weak management. Research by Daniela Scur and Renata Lemos provides new evidence on the performance of ‘d...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

All in the family? CEO choice and firm organization

Family firms are the most prevalent firm type in the world, particularly in emerging economies. Dynastic family firms tend to have lower productivity, though what explains their underperformance is still an open question...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

International data on measuring management practices

We examine methods used to survey firms on their management and organizational practices. We contrast the strengths and weaknesses of "open ended questions" (like the World Management Survey) with "closed questions" (lik...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

International data on measuring management practices

We examine methods used to survey firms on their management and organizational practices. We contrast the strengths and weaknesses of “open ended questions” (like the World Management Survey) with “closed questions” (lik...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

The new empirical economics of management

Over the last decade the World Management Survey (WMS) has collected firm-level management practices data across multiple sectors and countries. We developed the survey to try to explain the large and persistent TFP diff...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Bad management: a constraint on economic development?

Are poor management practices holding back middle-income countries? The authors look at evidence for private firms and public organisations in India - in manufacturing, retail, healthcare and education....Read more...