Research
Publications
Understanding Employee Trade-Offs in Remote Work: Toward More Sustainable Workplace Design(with Beata Wozniak-Jechorek, Amanda Sahar d’Urso & Chloe Thurston)
Forthcoming, Journal of Strategic Information Systems
Remote and hybrid work have become central to organizational life, yet questions remain about how to design arrangements that are sustainable over time. The sustainability of remote workplaces depends not only on digital infrastructures and organizational design but also on how employees evaluate trade-offs across multiple job attributes. We propose a preference-based sustainability model of remote work, rooted in employees’ trade-off logic. Using a conjoint experiment with 627 full-time U.S. workers, we estimate workplace preferences across six attributes: work location, salary, expense reimbursement, schedule flexibility, supervision, and support resources. Results show employees’ preferences are conditional rather than absolute. Employees strongly favor remote-heavy roles, but this preference depends on accompanying features. Workers tolerate monitoring, unchanged salaries, or modest cost burdens when granted full remote autonomy, but become less willing to make such concessions as office requirements increase. A salary premium of 15% can offset the loss of full remote work, though only in hybrid settings that remain flexible (e.g. up to three days in the office). These findings indicate employees weigh benefits and sacrifices holistically rather than evaluating attributes in isolation. For organizations seeking to bring workers back to the office, incentives beyond salary—such as flexibility, support, or cost-sharing—may play a critical role in sustaining acceptance.
(with Daniela Scur, Scott Ohlmacher, John Van Reenen et al.)
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, November 2024
Paper Online Appendix Replication Package
A country’s national income broadly depends on the quantity and quality of workers and capital. But how well these factors are managed within and between firms may be a key determinant of a country’s productivity and its GDP. Although social scientists have long studied the role of management practices in shaping business performance, their primary tool has been individual case studies. While useful for theory-building, such qualitative work is hard to scale and quantify. We present a large, scalable dataset measuring structured management practices at the business level across multiple countries. We measure practices related to performance monitoring, target-setting, and human resources. We document a set of key stylized facts, which we label “the international empirics of management”. In all countries, firms with more structured practices tend to also have superior economic performance: they are larger in scale, are more profitable, have higher labor productivity and are more likely to export. This consistency was not obvious ex-ante, and being able to quantify these relationships is valuable. We also document significant variation in practices across and within countries, which is important in explaining differences in the wealth of nations. The positive relationship between firm size and structured management practices is stronger in countries with more open and free markets, suggesting that stronger competition may allow firms with more structured management practices to grow larger, thereby potentially raising aggregate national income.
(with Andrea Lamorgese, Andrea Linarello & Fabiano Schivardi)
Management Science, May 2024
Paper Online Appendix Replication Package
We use the spread of COVID-19 in Italy, the first Western country hit by the pandemic, to investigate the role of structured management practices in responding to a large shock. We exploit a survey eliciting expected sales growth for 2020 to set up a Difference-in-Difference analysis with repeated cross-sections, leveraging the fact that the data collection began prior to the pandemic and continued throughout its spread. We find a sizable effect of such practices on firm performance: a one-standard-deviation increase in the management score increases expected sales growth by 2.3%, against an average drop of 8.3%. Results are confirmed with actual sales growth. Firms with more structured practices were more likely to implement a comprehensive set of changes, including a more intense use of remote work.
Review of Economic Research on Copyright Issues, 2020
Paper
Compulsory licensing of sound recordings is practiced in different countries, though the trajectories and rationale for arriving at this framework may differ. Developing countries often introduce measures to protect “infant” industries, but policy persistence can make subsequent changes hard. In 2010, the Copyright Board of India passed an order prescribing 2% of net advertising revenues to be paid by radio stations as compulsory license fees to copyright owners, citing the infancy of the private radio industry and the lack of access to music in India. Since the original order, the private radio industry has matured in size, coverage and listenership. Access to music today is facilitated through a far-reaching radio network, as well as widespread mobile and internet usage. The original order will be reviewed in September 2020. Given the maturation of the private radio industry over the past decade, this paper recommends India transitioning to the perspective considered for countries with mature radio industries. But how can the regulator determine the fair price of music closest to that found in a competitive market? Several strategies demonstrated in the literature can be used to establish a baseline valuation, following which adjustments can be made to account for any spillovers between the two industries.
(with Nick Bloom, Erik Brynjolfsson, Lucia Foster, Ron Jarmin, Itay Saporta-Eksten & John Van Reenen)
American Economic Review, May 2019
Paper Online Appendix Replication Package MDP data
Partnering with the US Census Bureau, we implement a new survey of “structured” management practices in two waves of 35,000 manufacturing plants in 2010 and 2015. We find an enormous dispersion of management practices across plants, with 40 percent of this variation across plants within the same firm. Management practices account for more than 20 percent of the variation in productivity, a similar, or greater, percentage as that accounted for by R&D, ICT, or human capital. We find evidence of two key drivers to improve management. The business environment, as measured by right-to-work laws, boosts incentive management practices. Learning spillovers, as measured by the arrival of large “Million Dollar Plants” in the county, increases the management scores of incumbents.
Working Papers
The Impact of FDIC Failed Bank Resolutions on Small Business CreditReject and Resubmit, Review of Finance
I study the effects of bank failures and house price fluctuations on small business credit in the Great Recession using novel transaction-level data for more than 140,000 micro and small firms in the US. Bank failures lead to declines in credit for small firms for up to six quarters, however, micro firms are not significantly affected by this shock. In contrast, house price fluctuations affect the credit of micro firms but have no significant impact on small firms. My results are consistent with the relative dependence on collateral versus lending relationships for micro and small firms seen in survey data.
CEPR Discussion Paper Ideas for India The Wire
I study India’s 2017 Goods and Services Tax (GST) to examine how self-enforcing tax design generates formalization cascades through supply chains. GST created incentives for formal procurement by allowing input tax credits only for purchases from registered suppliers. Using firm-level data on 12,024 firms, I find that firms at the mean pre-reform exposure to non-creditable taxes increased documented input purchases by 6 percent while reducing tax payments by 8 percent. Effects double over five years, consistent with formalization propagating sequentially upstream—a dynamic pattern that provides the first empirical evidence on the dynamics of VAT-driven formalization cascades. At the aggregate level, large firms’ share of national GST collections fell from 46 to 30 percent, implying smaller enterprises entering the formal tax net. The interquartile range of effective tax rates collapsed by 72 percent, reflecting the replacement of heterogeneous cascading taxes with uniform credits.
Under Review
CESifo Working Paper
Metal markets are an important but understudied aspect of the global energy transition. This paper demonstrates differential metal price responses to the Paris Agreement based on their role in the energy transition. We use a difference-in-differences design with daily price data from 2001 to 2024 for eight industrial metals. The treatment group distinguishes between traditional green metals (Copper, Aluminium, Nickel), which are established in renewable energy infrastructure, versus emerging green metals (Lithium), that are critical for storage. The control group includes non-green metals (Zinc, Lead, Tin, and Iron Ore). We find traditional green metals experienced 31% price decline relative to control metals following the Paris Agreement, while Lithium exhibited a 120% price increase.
Under Review
India’s Carbon Credit Trading Scheme (CCTS), announced in October 2025, is primarily a strategic response to the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), which enters full implementation in 2026. By targeting 800 industrial units in trade-exposed sectors like Aluminium, Cement, and Steel, India seeks to establish a domestic carbon price that can mitigate the financial impact of EU border levies. This viewpoint argues that while the CCTS is an effective immediate trade defense, its baseline-and-credit architecture creates structural tensions. Specifically, the use of intensity-based targets effectively treats emissions up to a baseline as free rights, which may be interpreted by international regulators as an implicit production subsidy. Furthermore, the significant price gap between projected domestic prices of €2.50 and EU levels of €80–100 threatens the long-term effectiveness of the shield. To ensure the CCTS evolves into a credible driver of both trade equivalence and domestic decarbonization, we propose strengthening Measurement, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) infrastructure and committing to a phased transition toward absolute emission caps.
Submitted
CEPR Discussion Paper
Remote work has transformed the globalization of services, moving beyond arm’s-length trade toward complex within-firm reorganization. Over the past two decades, multinational firms have increasingly established Global Capability Centers (GCCs)—large captive offshore service units through which knowledge-intensive tasks are performed at scale. We develop a model of heterogeneous service firms in which the scale and organization of remote work are endogenous choices. Adapting the logic of Helpman, Melitz, and Yeaple (2004) to the services context, firms trade off the variable cost savings of remote labor against the fixed costs of coordination and organizational capacity. Moderately productive firms reorganize through partial outsourcing, while only the most productive firms exceed a unique adoption threshold and establish GCCs, which offer the lowest variable costs but require the highest fixed investments. A general equilibrium extension characterizes a “self-limiting expansion” mechanism: the growth of large-scale remote work raises offshore labor demand and wages, endogenously tightening the productivity requirements for further adoption. The paper provides a unified framework connecting remote work to theories of multinational firms and positions GCCs as the services analogue of horizontal foreign direct investment.
Work in Progress
Big India vs. Big U.S.(with Mert Akan, Nick Bloom, Shelby Buckman & Pete Klenow)
Slides
We compare large (50 or more employee) manufacturing establishments in India and the U.S. We find the labor productivity gap among these establishments is substantial relative to the overall gap between all establishments in Indian vs. U.S. manufacturing. Large establishments therefore contribute a major portion of the gap, not just the smaller establishments that have received so much attention. We decompose the gap into management and worker quality, physical capital intensity, allocative efficiency, and a residual. The residual may reflect differences in innovation, as we document differences in residual demand (e.g., product quality and customer base) and new product introductions.
(with Mert Akan, Nick Bloom, Shelby Buckman, Pete Klenow, Ananya Kotia & Janak Nabar)
We study how family control and professionalization shape firm performance and organization using nationwide administrative records on over 350,000 registered Indian firms spanning the 1980s to the present, including director genealogies and tenure histories. We construct firm-year measures of family presence on boards and deploy event-study designs around leadership transitions and shifts toward professional boards. Supermajority family boards are systematically smaller and less productive: revenues, profits, and exporting are lower when more than three quarters of directors are family, relative to otherwise similar firms. Dynamic estimates around patriarch exit show post-transition improvements in operating outcomes and profitability ratios. Together, the evidence maps who professionalizes, when, and with what consequences for scale, productivity, and managerial practices in Indian firms.
(with Andrea Lamorgese, Andrea Linarello & Fabiano Schivardi)
Slides
We examine the role of complementarity between management and remote work in explaining the heterogeneous adoption of remote work across firms in Italy during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as its persistence afterward. To measure this, we exploit the exogenous variation in remote work adoption driven by the heterogeneous intensity of the lockdown across waves of COVID-19 in 2020 and across different Italian provinces. Our estimates suggest that labor productivity is hampered by the adoption of remote work in firms with less structured management practices, whereas it appears unchanged in firms adopting more structured ones. We consequently find that firms with more structured management practices sustain relatively higher remote work in the new normal.
(with Sara Casella & Kieran Larkin)
Slides
Female labor market outcomes have improved dramatically over the past half century, yet a significant and persistent child penalty remains. A leading explanation is the prevalence of “greedy” jobs that reward long, inflexible hours—features incompatible with the unequal burden of child care on women. We develop a dynamic life-cycle model with frictional occupational choice and endogenous human capital accumulation to quantify the role of workplace flexibility in mitigating gender gaps. We use the model to study how structural changes in work technology, specifically the post-2020 expansion of Work-from-Home (WFH), reshape the allocation of household time and, in turn, occupational sorting, human capital accumulation, and gender gaps over the life cycle. We find that while short-run adjustments are muted by switching frictions, the long-run general equilibrium effects are substantial. WFH induces younger cohorts of women to enter non-linear occupations, narrowing the gender gap in earnings and human capital over the life-cycle.
Tax systems in poor countries are characterized by high rates, non-transparent exemptions and poor enforcement resource constraints on the administration resulting in poor enforcement. Such an environment allows for the possibility of tax avoidance and evasion, especially when owners of the firm have high-powered incentives and managerial control. This paper finds evidence that manufacturing firms where there is continued involvement of the founding family pay less excise tax on their sales. These firms tend to be smaller and less productive, indicating that the implicit subsidy they receive in terms of lower effective tax rates may help them survive, diverting resources away from larger, more productive firms which would have been the main determinants of output and productivity in a more transparent economic environment.
(with Alessandra Allocca & Fabiano Schivardi)
Family firms are the dominant form of ownership worldwide, yet surprisingly little is known about the beliefs guiding founders’ succession decisions. We conduct a novel survey of 729 founders in Italy whose firms experienced a succession between 2013 and 2023. Using a hierarchical latent Dirichlet model for categorical survey responses, we uncover two distinct founder types. Relational founders emphasize family reputation, children’s aspirations, stakeholder relationships, and the preservation of family control. In contrast, Professional founders believe external managers can bring in additional skills and networks to expand firm value. Combining with administrative data on succession outcomes, we find that Relational founders are more likely to choose internal family succession. Our results suggest that the persistence of family management reflects heterogeneous beliefs about the sources of firm value, rather than institutional constraints or financial incentives alone.
(with Tanay Raj Bhatt)
This paper models fair use and the presence of both original artistic and derivative works in a market where consumers substitute between the two. Artists sell their rights to a distributor who pays royalty. The distributor competes with other distributors who sell derivative works but do not pay royalty to the artist under the fair use regime. We derive the growth rate of creative works and find it to be concave in the fair use parameter. We compare the growth rate under three different price regimes: one where producers of original and derived works can both sell at monopolist competitive prices, second, where the producers of derived works cannot charge markups above marginal costs, and third, where the social planner redistributes the profits from derivative works back to artists in the form of subsidies.
What margins do firms use to comply with environmental regulation? While evidence from advanced economies suggests that market-based environmental regulation can reduce emissions without adverse real effects, I show that in a developing-country setting, firms respond by reducing scale rather than adopting new technology. Using a 26-year plant-level panel from India combined with newly digitized regulatory assignments, I study one of the largest energy efficiency programs implemented in a developing economy. The regulation reduced fuel expenditure by 9–18 percent. Firms contracted: employment fell by 5–8 percent, capital by 7 percent, and product scope declined. Physical efficiency rose through forced input reoptimization, but no technology was adopted: R&D, investment, and product upgrading were unchanged. The contraction is driven by physical capital constraints, not financial ones: old plants with non-retrofittable equipment contract most, while financial access does not help. These effects propagate through production networks to non-regulated plants in linked sectors. The findings have implications for the design of carbon markets in developing economies.
Can bankruptcy reform change firm behaviour even among firms that never enter bankruptcy? I study India’s Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), enacted in 2016, which created a credible threat that defaulting promoters would lose control of their firms. Using a panel of 36,217 private Indian firms from the CMIE Prowess database over FY2010–2025, I find that firms with high pre-IBC leverage cut investment by 1.6 percentage points and improved return on assets by 3.6 percentage points relative to low-leverage firms after the reform. The baseline leverage coefficient is not significant due to mean reversion, but three independent corrections—firm-specific linear trends, first differences, and long differences—all recover significant deleveraging. Effects intensify after Section 29A barred defaulting promoters from rebidding (November 2017) and persist during the COVID suspension of IBC filings (FY2020–21), consistent with structural behavioural change. The findings suggest that the benefits of bankruptcy reform extend far beyond resolved cases.
When does institutional ownership change how firms operate? A one percentage point increase in foreign institutional ownership reduces firm energy intensity by 2.7 percent, but an identical increase in bank ownership has no effect. The difference is not ownership; it is the incentive to monitor. I exploit a setting where three types of institutional investors—foreign funds, domestic mutual funds, and banks—hold equity in the same Indian manufacturing firms under distinct regulatory mandates. A shift-share instrument identifies the causal effect of ownership; within-market variation in mandates identifies the role of incentives. Effects concentrate in margins subject to managerial discretion (energy, labor), not market-determined inputs (raw materials)—ruling out generic firm quality and supporting targeted monitoring. A direct test confirms the mechanism: when India’s securities regulator (SEBI) introduces ESG stewardship requirements in 2018, domestic mutual funds—which exhibited zero effect for a decade—become significant determinants of energy intensity, with flat pre-trends.
Can aggregate productivity double while establishments stay the same size? Indian manufacturing labor productivity doubled between 2010 and 2021 without establishments growing through the size distribution. I construct a unified firm-level dataset spanning formal and informal manufacturing—1.3 million firm-year observations combining a 24-year factory panel with four nationally representative informal-sector surveys—and use it to document and decompose this pattern. First, a 22:1 productivity gap between the largest and smallest establishments that has not closed, and an employment size distribution polarizing away from the US benchmark rather than toward it. Second, an Olley–Pakes decomposition attributes 58 percent of the aggregate gain to within-establishment improvement and 42 percent to a rising size–productivity covariance, while the Hsieh and Klenow (2009) ratio Y/Y* stays essentially flat at 0.58: within-industry misallocation did not diminish. Third, in the formal sector, where panel tracking is possible, a five-year transition matrix shows the upper-middle (500–999) is a trap. Fourth, panel life-cycle profiles by entry cohort are flat and flattening: 2000s cohorts match Hsieh and Klenow (2014), 2010s cohorts fall below. Productivity grew within the establishment; size did not.
Million Dollar Plants and the Scope of Local Subsidies
Innovation in India
Management and Innovation
(with Claudia Nobile)
Family Capital
(with Daniela Scur & Fabiano Schivardi)
Policy reports & reviews
The Importance of Structured Management Practices
(with Nick Bloom, Erik Brynjolfsson, Itay Saporta-Eksten & John Van Reenen)
MIT Sloan Management Review, April 18, 2017
Link
Trends in Copyright Infringement and Enforcement
(with Shohini Sengupta & Aishwarya Giridhar)
Esya Centre monograph, Dec 2019
Link
Measuring India’s Creative Economy
Esya Centre monograph, June 2020
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E-retail, consumer demand & the road to recovery
(with Mohit Chawdhry)
Esya Centre monograph, Sept 2020
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Batting ahead: Management, innovation and the future of Indian manufacturing
(with Mert Akan, Nick Bloom, Chaitanya Lekharaju, Pete Klenow, PJ Nishok, Janak Nabar)
CTIER report, May 2024
Link Slides Video