Development Meets Organizational Economics


Development Meets Organizational Economics
Hosted By: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
Date of Meeting: 22/05/2013 to 23/05/2013

The workshop brought together organizational economists and development economists to discuss productivity within and between firms (such as in supply chains) in low-income economies. The workshop was part presentations and part brainstorming.

Most of the presentations distilled frameworks from organizational economics that have proven useful in studying productivity within and between firms in high-income economies—such as formal and relational contracting, as well as information, communication and decision-making within firms. Many of these frameworks are especially relevant for firms in developing countries, where weak institutional environments lead to challenges in making credible commitments to employees and trading partners alike. At the same time, new firm- and plant-level data from low-income countries provides the opportunity to test organizational theories.

The meeting involved a select group of approximately 20 academics who interacted by mixing discussions with:

  • Brief presentations about organizational economics;

Bob Gibbons, "Relational Contracts: The Role of Discretion in Incentives and Control Within Firm and Between"

Luis Garicano, "Information and Coordination in Organisations"

  • Presentations of data sets and data being used for research from firms in low-income countries;
  • Presentations on a number of complete working papers. You can access some of the papers below:

Abhijit Banerjee, Raghabendra Chattopadhyay, Esther Duflo, Daniel Keniston and Nina Singh, "Can Institutions be Reformed from Within? Evidence from a Randomised Experiment with the Rajasthan Police"

Pol Antràs and C. Fritz Foley, "Poultry in Motion: A Study of International Trade Finance Practices"

This event was partly funded by PEDL.

A programme of the event can be found here: Development Meets Organizational Economics Agenda.


Details of the PEDL kick off  workshop, which was held in London on 18/19 May 2012 can be found here: PEDL kick off workshop