Econometrica: Nov, 2024, Volume 92, Issue 6

The Impacts of Managerial Autonomy on Firm Outcomes

https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA19872
p. 1777-1800

Namrata Kala

The allocation of decision‐making power is a critical choice that organizations make to mitigate agency problems and information frictions. This paper investigates the role of delegation for organizations where the agency problem is both pervasive and has potentially high welfare consequences: state‐owned enterprises (SOEs). I use a natural experiment in India to uncover the causal effects of granting SOE managers more autonomy over strategic decisions. Managers meaningfully exercise this autonomy, which results in greater value added, but also a reduced emphasis on outcomes valued by the government, such as a reduction in worker amenities (employee housing), and an increase in markups. Returns to autonomy are higher for firms with higher baseline incentive conflict.

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Supplement to "The Impacts of Managerial Autonomy on Firm Outcomes"

Namrata Kala

The replication package for this paper is available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11431164. The authors were granted an exemption to publish parts of their data because either access to these data is restricted or the authors do not have the right to republish them. However, the authors included in the package, on top of the codes and the parts of the data that are not subject to the exemption, a simulated or synthetic dataset that allows running the codes. The Journal checked the data and the codes for their ability to generate all tables and figures in the paper and approved online appendices. Whenever the available data allowed, the Journal also checked for their ability to reproduce the results. However, the synthetic/simulated data are not designed to produce the same results. Given the highly demanding nature of the algorithms, the reproducibility checks were run on a simplified version of the code, which is also available in the replication package.

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