The School of Economics invites you to a seminar presented by Michela Giorcelli (UCLA).

Abstract

This paper examines the effects of managerial practices on firm performance, using evidence from the Training Within Industry (TWI) program. The TWI plan was a business training program implemented by the US government between 1940 and 1945 to provide management consulting to firms involved in war production. Using newly collected panel data on the population of 11,575 U.S. firms that applied to the program, we estimate its causal effects by exploiting quasirandom variation in the allocation of instructors to firms. We find that receiving any TWI training had a positive effect on firm performance, even though the impact of human resources management is larger. Human resources management is also complementary to the other managerial practices. Finally, we document substantial heterogeneity in the effects of the program depending on whether top or middle managers were trained.