Title: MANAGEMENT AS A TECHNOLOGY?

Biography:

Nicholas Bloom (born 5 May 1973) is the William Eberle Professor in the Department of Economics at Stanford University, a Courtesy Professor at Stanford Business School and Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and a co-Director of the Productivity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society, and the recipient of the Frisch Medal in 2010 and the Bernacer Prize in 2012.

His research focuses on the measurement and impact of uncertainty on investment, employment and growth. He also works on the measurement of management practices and productivity with Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen, and on innovation.

Abstract

Are some management practices akin to a technology that can explain firm and national productivity, or do they simply reflect contingent management styles? We collect data on core management practices from over 11,000 firms in 34 countries. We find large cross-country differences in the adoption of management practices, with the US having the highest sizeweighted average management score. We present a formal model of “Management as a Technology”, and structurally estimate it using panel data to recover parameters including the depreciation rate and adjustment costs of managerial capital (both found to be larger than for tangible non-managerial capital). Our model also predicts (i) a positive impact of management on firm performance; (ii) a positive relationship between product market competition and average management quality (part of which stems from the larger covariance between management with firm size as competition strengthens); and (iii) a rise in the level and a fall in the dispersion of management with firm age. We find strong empirical support for all of these predictions in our data. Finally, building on our model, we find that differences in management practices account for about 30% of total factor productivity differences both between countries and within countries across firms.