September 26, 2018
Article
Vox, CEPR Policy Portal

Ownership and Power Structure: Together at Last

By: Laura Alfaro, Nicholas Bloom, Paola Conconi, Harald Fadinger, Patrick Legros, Andrew Newman, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen

Format:Electronic

Abstract

Economists have largely ignored the deep interdependency between integration and delegation. This column describes a new theory of integration and delegation choices aimed at shedding light on how these distinct elements of organizational design interact. Contrary to what is suggested by a naïve one-dimensional approach, the model predicts that delegation and outsourcing should be negatively correlated, a prediction that holds up well when the model is applied to data for thousands of firms across many industries and countries.

Keywords

Power; Organisational Design; Economics; Ownership; Organizational Design

Citation

Alfaro, Laura, Nicholas Bloom, Paola Conconi, Harald Fadinger, Patrick Legros, Andrew Newman, Raffaella Sadun, and John Van Reenen. "Ownership and Power Structure: Together at Last." Vox, CEPR Policy Portal (September 26, 2018).