Innovation, Organisations and Markets

Strong export performance is often seen as key to unleashing firm productivity and spurring economic growth, both for the exporting firms themselves and for the broader economy. Given these perceived benefits, middle and low-income country (LMIC) governments commonly implement export promotion policies that aim to alleviate market failures hindering export growth.

Strong export performance is often seen as key to unleashing firm productivity and spurring economic growth, both for the exporting firms themselves and for the broader economy. Given these perceived benefits, middle and low-income country (LMIC) governments commonly implement export promotion policies that aim to alleviate market failures hindering export growth.

The rise of the information economy has highlighted how data may be an input into production (Veldkamp and Chung, forthcoming). Since firms conversely accumulate data through production, large firms may be able to accumulate data more quickly, giving them an advantage. The advantage is especially stark in retail, where a key dimension of productivity is the ability to forecast demand for individual products (Samaniego de la Parra and Shenoy, 2023). Walmart came to dominate U.S.

Women’s work outside the home (WWOH) rate in Pakistan is among the lowest in the world. This is partly due to employer’s having incorrect information and beliefs about women’s ability to carry out work (a demand-side information constraint) and social stigma preventing women and their families from seeking jobs related information (a supply-side information constraint).

This project proposes a field experiment in which the researchers create variation in financial contract form and access to charging infrastructure to evaluate the barriers to electric two-wheelers adoption in Kenya.

In this project, the research team studies how firms compete and how consumers respond to price changes. The study takes place in Mwanza, Tanzania’s second-largest city and focuses on small, urban firms selling maize flour, an important staple food in this region.  

This project investigates the impact of digital lending on reducing the gender gap in the credit markets and the performance of small businesses in Kisumu City, Kenya.

This project explores whether, in thin markets, the diffusion of new technologies to small groups of individuals generates rents, which then lead these individuals to limit the diffusion of these technologies to others.

This project implements a field experiment to unpack demand- and supply-side constraints for quality upgrading in Ugandan carpentry, and study the interaction between these two sources of constraints.

This project studies the cost imposed by tax enforcement measures on firms in Uganda.