Research

Working Papers

• (with Natarajan Balasubramanian and Jeongsik Lee) Deadlines, Work Flows and Work Quality  (under revision)

• (with Sutirtha Bagchi) Barriers to Entry and Pricing Behavior: Evidence from Reforms of Cable Franchising Regulations

• (with Ryan Monarch and Jooyoun Park) Gains from Offshoring? Evidence from U.S. Microdata

• (with Amy Dittmar and Sreedhar Bharath) Does capital market myopia affect plant productivity? Evidence from ``going private" transactions (under 2nd round review)

• (with Margaret Levenstein and Valerie Suslow) The Effect of Competition on Trade Patterns:  Evidence from the Collapse of International Cartels (under revision for resubmission)

• (with Natarajan Balasubramanian) NBER Patent data-BR bridge -- User Guide & Technical Documentation

Publications

• with Juan Carlos Hallak) Product and Process Productivity: Implications for Quality choice and Conditional Eexporter Premia  (forthcoming in the Journal of International Economics)

• Web Appendix

  • Significantly revised from  older NBER working paper (14928) version which is available here

• (with Amil Petrin)  Estimating Lost Output from Allocative Inefficiency, with Application to Chile and Firing Costs  forthcoming in the The Review of Economics and Statistics.

• This is significantly revised from an older/different NBER working paper version available here

• Stata code for production function and gap estimates is available here

• (with Natarajan Balasubramanian) What happens when firms patent?  New evidence from US manufacturing census data The Review of Economics and Statistics February 2011, Vol. 93, No. 1: 126–146.

• Supplementary appendix
   

• (with Bo Becker) The effect of financial development on the investment-cash flow relationship: cross-country evidence from Europe The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy: Vol. 10 : Iss. 1 (Advances), Article 43 (2010).
   

• Barriers to Competition and Productivity: Evidence from India The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy: Vol. 9 : Iss. 1 (Advances), Article 42 (2009). [Finalist for the 2009 Arrow Prize]

  • A working paper version is available here.

• Supplementary Appendix

• Data setup files

• Note on the economic regulatory regime in India: 1947 to 1998
   

• (with Natarajan Balasubramanian) Capital Resalability, Productivity Dispersion and Market Structure,  The Review of Economics and Statistics, Volume: 91   Issue: 3   August 2009,  Pages: 547-557   
• An older working  paper version is available here: Capital Liquidity, Productivity Dispersion and Market Structure.
• Data on our Capital Resalability/Capital Liquidity/ Non-sunkenness measure is available here
   

• (with Francine Lafontaine) Do Labor Market Rigidities have Microeconomic Effects? Evidence from Within the Firm  American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, Vol.1, No. 2, April 2009, Pages 88-127

• Web appendix of additional results

• Stata value function iteration and simulation code for table 2

• An non-gated older working paper version is here

• Powerpoint slides on the paper are here
   

• (with Francine Lafontaine) Within-firm Labor Productivity across Countries: A Case Study, in International Differences in the Business Practices and Productivity of Firms, Richard Freeman and Katherine Shaw, eds, NBER (2009).
   
• (with Joel Slemrod) Tax Law Changes, Income Shifting and Measured Wage Inequality: Evidence from India,  Journal of Public Economics Vol. 92, Issues 10-11, October 2008, Pages 2199-2224

Work-in-progress

• (with Natarajan Balasubramanian and Ravi Dharwadkar) Managerial Entrenchment, Firm Growth and Investment Performance
  
• “Labor Mobility in High Technology Firms” (joint with Jin Woo Chang, Bill Kerr and Sari Kerr)
  

Teaching

• Applied Microeconomics, MBA (Core) Course, BE502/503
  This course provides students with the foundations of microeconomic analysis.  The primary objective is to develop the abilities of students to apply fundamental microeconomic concepts to a wide range of managerial decisions as well as public policy issues.  Foundation topics include:  the nature of the firm, its costs and supply behavior; consumer behavior and market demand; market forces, price formation and resource allocation; international trade and trade restrictions; and, market power and price-setting behavior.  Students will also be introduced to more advanced aspects of microeconomic analysis, including topics such as decision-making with risk and imperfect information, more complex pricing strategies, and game theory.    
  Optional Text: Robert S. Pindyck and Daniel L. Rubinfeld, Microeconomics, 7th Edition, Prentice Hall, Inc., 2009.     

• Incentives and Productivity, MBA (Elective) Course, BE/MO 619
  The topics covered in this course include hiring and firing decisions, human capital and on-the-job training, turnover, the provision of incentives, the advantages and disadvantages of alternative compensation schemes, objective and subjective performance evaluation, relative performance evaluation, promotions and other career-based incentive schemes, team production and team incentives, stock options and executive compensation, non-monetary compensation and mandated benefits.  Each of the major topics is introduced by a class discussion of an actual business case, witha  focus on understanding what can be taken away from the case and generalized more broadly. For each practice, tool or approach that we analyze, we identify the key goals, and the trade-offs associated with them and explore how, why and under what circumstances various approaches work or do not work.
  Optional Text:  Lazear, E. and Gibbs, M., “Personnel Economics in Practice”, 2nd Edition, John Wiley and Sons, 2009.

• Co-instructor (with Francine Lafontaine): Applied Industrial Economics, PhD (Elective) Course, BA875
  This course covers materials from those areas of industrial organization economics most relevant to business school PhD students, providing foundations for research on economics related topics in business economics, international business, strategy, marketing, operations, finance and other fields. The course also complements the Industrial Organization sequence in the economics department, and as such should be of interest to students from the Economics department who are considering industrial organization as a field or who may be interested in a career in business economics.  We review important theoretical advances in each subject area, but the emphasis will be on illustrating the variety of approaches used in empirical research. This focus on applied advances is meant to provide a solid foundation for students interested in pursuing empirical work in their own dissertation, but also to help students interpret existing empirical work and what it can contribute to theory development.  This IS NOT a methods class: econometric techniques and other statistical tools are not be the primary focus.  Instead, the goal will be to understand the empirical methodology, namely the way authors approach the theory, how they derive testable hypotheses, where and how they obtain the necessary data, and finally, how they generate and interpret their results. Topics to be covered vary somewhat from year to year depending on instructor and student interests, but usually include theory of the firm, vertical integration decisions, vertical (channel) relations, industry dynamics, and productivity.

• Nominated by the Ross Class of 2009, 2011, 2012, and 2013 for the Ross Teaching Excellence Award; Nominated by PhD students for 2009 and 2013 PhD Teaching Excellence Award