.
WORKING PAPERS
Trust and Multinational Business Group Structure,
R&R Journal of International Economics
Joint with Christian Fons-Rosen (University of California Merced -UCM) and Miriam Manchin (University College London -UCL)
CEPR Discussion Paper DP194617
This paper aims to understand how social capital in the form of trust across affiliates within European business conglomerates shapes the hierarchical structure of these business groups, and in turn, how these different business group structures associate with firm level performance. With a unique dataset containing detailed information on ownership chains and hierarchical structures of European business groups, we look deeper into these structures, and their effects on performance of group affiliate. Our results indicate that higher trust allows for more vertical structures. Moreover, we find that vertical structures are associated with higher firm performance in a business group.
Peer Pressure and Manager Pressure in Organisations,
R&R Journal of the European Economic Association
Joint with Jordi Blanes i Vidal (LSE), Tom Kirchmaier (LSE) and Diego Battiston (University of Edinburgh)
CEP Discussion Paper, No.1924
Organisations can choose the physical environment in which their workers operate. We study whether managers can nurture the talents of employees by appropriate workplace organization. More specifically we analyse the effect of physical proximity among colleagues on worker productivity. Using high-frequency data from the 999 Call Handling Room of the Greater Manchester Police we look at occupation of the desks adjacent to a working handler. We find that the presence of a nearby colleague increases worker productivity, the effect is stronger when the nearby colleague shares the same supervisor, and when the worker is new in the organization. This leads us to believe that managers can play an important role in workplace organization leading to higher work performance.
Colocation and Knowledge Diffusion: Evidence from Million Dollar Plant
Joint with Christian Fons-Rosen (University of California Merced- UCM) and Vincenzo Scrutinio (University of Bologna UNIBO) – LSE ,CEP Discussion Paper Paper, No. 1446, August 2017
This paper analyses whether superior location strategies enhance firms’ innovation capabilities. We use the entry of large corporations into U.S. counties to analyse the effect these firms had on the innovation activity of local inventors. We exploit information on the revealed ranking of possible locations for large plants in the US. Locations not chosen (losers) are a counterfactual for the chosen location (winner). We find that the inventors in winning counties have competitive advantage over inventors in losing counties: inventors in winning counties cite the patents of these large corporations more after the entry.
WORK IN PROGRESS
Do group affiliates perform better when the group goes multinational?
This paper evaluates the effect of the internationalization of a European business group on its original members. The analysis shows that performance of these firms, measured in terms of sales, improves by 2%. The effects materialize progressively in the years following the entry of a foreign firm in the group.
PEER-REVIEWED PUBLICATION
Advances in Strategic Management, vol. 36: Geography, Location, and Strategy , May 2017
This paper provides a primer on European multinational business groups and their subsidiaries. Firms in these business groups appear to have higher sales performance than firms in domestic groups. This leads us to investigate which elements increase the likelihood that a group will transition towards multinational status. Business groups’ characteristics matter for foreign acquisition: groups becoming multinational are usually larger, have a more hierarchical structure with respect to the number of layers in a group, and are more diverse in terms of sectors. Groups tend to expand into bordering countries or countries providing particular advantages, such as a large internal market. The first acquisition is a corporate-level decision that appears to be made by the group’s controlling firm and is often a diversification into a different industry
BLOG PUBLICATIONS
Technology diffusion and innovation: the regional gains from entry of large plants
Joint with Christian Fons-Rosen (UCM) and Vincenzo Scrutinio (UNIBO)
The London School of Economics: Global Investment & Local Development, May 2018