Do Prices Determine Vertical Integration? Evidence from Trade Policy

Laura Alfaro, Paola Conconi, Harald Fadinger, Andrew Newman, 28 October 2012

This paper shows that product prices determine organisational design by studying how trade policy affects vertical integration. The authors construct firm-level indices of vertical integration for a large set of countries and industries and exploit cross-section and time-series variation in import tariffs to examine the impact of prices on organisational choices.

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URL: www.cepr.org/pubs/dps/DP9200.asp
Topics: Industrial organisation
Tags: industrial organisation, property rights, vertical integration

2586 reads

Women's Inheritance: Evidence from India

Klaus Deininger, Aparajita Goyal, Hari Nagarajan, 3 December 2010

Women in many countries face legal barriers preventing them from inheriting property. This column argues that this is a starting place for broader gender inequality and that stronger inheritance rights for women are likely to be an effective mechanism for improving their access to physical and human capital.

Policymakers should aim to improve women’s position relative to men’s – not only is it fairer, but it is also more efficient, according to those in favour such initiatives (see for example Duflo 2003).

Topics: Development, Labour markets, Poverty and income inequality
Tags: gender inequality, India, property rights

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8437 reads

Reforming property rights

Tim Besley, Maitreesh Ghatak, 22 April 2009

This column explores the security of property rights and the various channels through which they affect economic activity. It demonstrates a strong correlation between secure property rights and economic development and discusses the institutional challenges involved. Property rights reform is no panacea, and it faces difficult political economy hurdles in some countries.

Whether they thought private property was a sine qua non of a free society or organised theft, classical economists, from Adam Smith (1776) to Karl Marx (1891), accorded a central position to the role of property rights or the “relations of production” in the process of economic development.

Topics: Development
Tags: Hernando de Soto, property rights

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Expropriations of foreign-owned oil assets more likely with high oil prices and weak political institutions

Sergei Guriev, Konstantin Sonin, Anton Kolotilin, 25 March 2008

In recent years we have witnessed a phenomenon that has not been observed since the 1970s: the forced nationalization of major, foreign-owned oil assets in Venezuela, Bolivia, Russia and Kazakhstan. The authors of CEPR DP6755 study nationalizations in the oil industry around the world in 1960-2002 and show that governments are more likely to nationalize when oil prices are high and when political institutions are weak.

In recent years we have witnessed a phenomenon that has not been observed since the 1970s: the forced nationalization of major, foreign-owned oil assets in Venezuela, Bolivia, Russia and Kazakhstan. Due to economies of scale and better human capital, multinational oil companies have been more efficient and expropriations often give rise to losses of output and national income.

Journalists are entitled to free DP downloads on request; please contact pressoffice@cepr.org. To learn more about subscribing to CEPR's Discussion Paper Series, please visit the CEPR website.

URL: http://www.cepr.org/pubs/new-dps/dplist.asp?dpno=6755.asp
Topics: Energy
Tags: nationalization, oil industry, property rights