Internal vs. External Markets

本项目是对内部和外部产品、资本和劳动力市场交易之间的差异以及这些差异对企业行为的影响进行理论和实证调查。第一个项目试图理解为什么一些新的商业风险是由老牌公司承担的，而另一些是由初创公司承担的。该模型给出的答案基于内部和外部劳动力市场功能的关键差异，即内部劳动力市场在新企业失败时将企业工人重新部署到企业其他项目的能力。该模型将用于分析新企业形成的水平和效率；新公司和老牌公司员工的特点；以及雇员在这两类公司所从事的工作类型。第二个项目（与麻省理工学院经济系森德希尔•穆莱纳坦合作）旨在了解垂直一体化的影响。如果整合没有实际效果，整合企业和非整合企业应对外部市场冲击的方式应该相同。本研究利用美国4000多家石化工厂的25年综合数据库，分析了综合和非综合石化生产商的投资行为，从而检验了情况是否确实如此。初步结果表明，整合企业的产能投资对市场冲击的敏感性低于非整合企业。该项目考虑了对这些发现的几种相互竞争的解释，并概述了一种区分它们的经验策略。

This project is a theoretical and empirical investigation of the differences between internal and external product, capital and labor market transactions and the implications of these differences for firm behavior. The first project seeks to understand why some new business ventures are undertaken by established firms, while others are undertaken by start-up firms. The model presents an answer based on a key difference in the functioning of internal and external labor markets, namely the ability of internal labor markets to redeploy workers in the firm to other projects in the firm if the new venture fails. The model will then be used to analyze the level and efficiency of new firm formation; the characteristics of employees at new and established firms; and the type of work employees undertake at the two types of firms.The second project (joint with Sendhil Mullainathan, Department of Economics, MIT) seeks to understand the effects of vertical integration. If integration has no real effects, integrated and non-integrated firms should respond in the same way to external market shocks. This study examines whether this is indeed the case by analyzing the investment behavior of integrated and non-integrated petrochemical producers using a comprehensive 25-year database of over 4000 U.S. petrochemical plants. The preliminary results suggest that capacity investments by integrated firms are less sensitive than non-integrated firms to market shocks. The project considers several competing explanations of these findings, and outlines an empirical strategy for distinguishing among them.