Make Versus Buy in Trucking:Asset Ownership, Job Design, and Information
- 1 May 2003
- journal article
- Published by American Economic Association in American Economic Review
- Vol. 93 (3) , 551-572
- https://doi.org/10.1257/000282803322156981
Abstract
Explaining patterns of asset ownership is a central goal of both organizational economics and industrial organization. We develop a model of asset ownership in trucking, which we test by examining how the adoption of different classes of on-board computers (OBCs) between 1987 and 1997 influenced whether shippers use their own trucks for hauls or contract with for-hire carriers. We find that OBCs' incentive-improving features pushed hauls toward private carriage, but their resource-allocation-improving features pushed them toward for-hire carriage. We conclude that ownership patterns in trucking reflect the importance of both incomplete contracts and of job design and measurement issues.Keywords
All Related Versions
This publication has 5 references indexed in Scilit:
- Monotone Comparative StaticsEconometrica, 1994
- Incentive Contracts and Performance MeasurementJournal of Political Economy, 1992
- Electronic markets and electronic hierarchiesCommunications of the ACM, 1987
- The Costs and Benefits of Ownership: A Theory of Vertical and Lateral IntegrationJournal of Political Economy, 1986
- Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structureJournal of Financial Economics, 1976