ERIC VERHOOGEN

Professor, Department of Economics and School of International and Public Affairs
Co-Director, Center for Development Economics and Policy
Columbia University

Welcome. My main research area is industrial development -- firms, innovation, productivity, trade, industrial policy, labor markets in developing countries. A number of my papers have been concerned with the process of quality upgrading -- why and how firms raise quality when they sell to richer countries, and the consequences for labor and other input markets. Recently I've been working on technology adoption and productivity estimation, among other topics. Links to my academic papers and other writings are below.

CV
Google Scholar profile

Mailing address: 420 W. 118th St., Room 1022, MC 3308, New York, NY 10027
Office: IAB 1119
Tel: (212) 854-4428
Email: eric.verhoogen@columbia.edu
Twitter: @EricVerhoogen

Office hours: by appointment

• "Firm-Level Upgrading in Developing Countries.” CDEP-CGEG Working Paper no. 83, March 2020. Under revision for the Journal of Economic Literature.


• "Estimating Production Functions in Differentiated-Product Industries with Quantity Information and External Instruments.” With Nicolás de Roux, Marcela Eslava, and Santiago Franco. Dec. 2020. Appendix. Working paper series: NBER 28323, CEPR 15626, IZA 14006, BREAD 583, CDEP-CGEG 90, CEDE 2021-02.


• "Exports and Wage Premia: Evidence from Mexican Employer-Employee Data.” With Judith A. Frías, David S. Kaplan, and David Alfaro-Serrano. CDEP-CGEG Working Paper no. 64, Sept. 2018. Under revision for the Review of Economics and Statistics. Appendix. Previous version, Aug. 2009.

• “Enlisting Employees in Improving Payroll-Tax Compliance: Evidence from Mexico.” With Todd Kumler and Judith A. Frías. Review of Economics and Statistics, v. 102, no. 5, pp. 881-896, Dec. 2020. Appendix. 


• Related article: "Improving Payroll-Tax Compliance Through Decentralized Monitoring," VoxDev, June 2017


• “Export Destinations and Input Prices.” With Paulo Bastos and Joana Silva. American Economic Review, v. 108, no. 2, pp. 353-392, Feb. 2018. Appendix A. Appendix B. 


• VoxDev column
• World Bank Research Digest summary (see p. 4)
• Selected for Competitiveness and Globalization prize by Portuguese Ministry of the Economy.


• “Organizational Barriers to Technology Adoption: Evidence from Soccer-Ball Producers in Pakistan.” With David Atkin, Azam Chaudhry, Shamyla Chaudry, and Amit Khandelwal. Quarterly Journal of Economics, v. 132, no. 3, pp. 1101-1164, Aug. 2017. Appendix A. Appendix B. (Slides.)


• SIPA Video: "Big Questions/Big Ideas: Incentives in Innovation"
• Related article: "How Labor Standards Can Be Good for Growth" Harvard Business Revew (online). pdf.
• IGC Video: "Footballs in Pakistan: An Innovation Story"
• VoxDev column, VoxDev video
• Media coverage: Canada AM (national morning news), Marketplace (American Public Media), The Atlantic online, The New Republic online, Wall Street Journal Real Time Economics blog, NBER Digest, Columbia News, Valor Econômico (Brazil), The Nation (Pakistan), phys.org, Chris Blattman's blog, Stephen Dubner's TMSIDK podcast (at 29:54), Dagens Nyheter (Sweden)
• Columbia Business School Case 180311: "Innovation in Pakistan's Soccer Ball Industry: Barriers to Adoption".


• “On the Origins and Development of Pakistan’s Soccer-Ball Cluster.” With David Atkin, Azam Chaudhry, Shamyla Chaudry, Amit Khandelwal, and Tariq Raza. World Bank Economic Review (ABCDE Conference Papers & Proceedings), v. 30, no. S1, pp. S34-S41, March 2017.


• “Mark-up and Cost Dispersion Across Firms: Direct Evidence from Producer Surveys in Pakistan.” With David Atkin, Azam Chaudhry, Shamyla Chaudry, and Amit Khandelwal. American Economic Review Papers & Proceedings, v. 105, no. 5, pp. 537–544, May 2015. Online appendix. (.bib)


• “Exports and Within-Plant Wage Distributions: Evidence from Mexico.” With Judith A. Frías and David S. Kaplan. American Economic Review Papers & Proceedings, v. 102, no. 3, pp. 435-440, May 2012. Online appendix. (.bib)


• “Prices, Plant Size, and Product Quality.” With Maurice Kugler. Review of Economic Studies, vol. 79 no. 1, pp. 307-339, Jan. 2012. Online appendix. (.bib)


• Earlier versions: (1) “The Quality-Complementarity Hypothesis: Theory and Evidence from Colombia.” NBER working paper #14418, Oct. 2008. (2) “Product Quality at the Plant Level: Plant Size, Exports, Output Prices and Input Prices in Colombia.” PER Discussion Paper 0708-12, Columbia University, Jan. 2008.


• “Plants and Imported Inputs: New Facts and an Interpretation.” With Maurice Kugler. American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, v. 99 no. 2, pp. 501-507, May 2009. (.bib) Supplementary material: Appendix Table 1.


• “Class-Size Caps, Sorting, and the Regression Discontinuity Design.” With Miguel Urquiola. American Economic Review, v. 99 no. 1, pp. 179-215, March 2009. (.bib)


• “Trade, Quality Upgrading and Wage Inequality in the Mexican Manufacturing Sector.” Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 123, no. 2, pp. 489-530, May 2008. (.bib) Appendix II, Erratum.


• Reprinted in Trade and Inequality, ed. Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg, Oxford University Press, 2015.
• Earlier versions: (1) June 2007: CEPR #6385, BREAD #153, IZA #2913; (2) Jan. 2004: UC Berkeley Center for Labor Economics #67.
• Press mentions: Wall Street Journal, May 24, 2007, page A1 (Volkswagen example drawn in part from this paper.) In Spanish: La Reforma (México D.F.), May 24, 2007, Negocios p. 10. Non-technical summary: SIPA News, Jan. 2009.
• VW photos


• “Fairness and Freight-Handlers: Local Labor Market Conditions and Wage Fairness Perceptions in a Trucking Firm.” With Stephen V. Burks and Jeffrey P. Carpenter. Industrial and Labor Relations Review, vol. 60, no. 4, pp. 477-498, July 2007. (.bib)


• “Comparing Students to Workers: The Effects of Social Framing on Behavior in Distribution Games.” With Jeffrey P. Carpenter and Stephen V. Burks. In J. P. Carpenter, G. Harrison, and J. List eds., Research in Experimental Economics, vol. 10. Amsterdam, Boston: JAI/Elsevier, 2005. (.bib)


• “The Effect of Stakes in Distribution Experiments.” With Stephen V. Burks and Jeffrey P. Carpenter. Economics Letters, vol. 86, no. 2, Feb. 2005. (.bib)


• “Playing Both Roles in the Trust Game.” With Stephen V. Burks and Jeffrey P. Carpenter. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, vol. 51 no.2, pp. 195-216, June 2003. (.bib)

• Columbia Business School Case Study: "Innovation in Pakistan's Soccer Ball Industry: Barriers to Adoption." With R. A. Farrokhnia and Amit Khandelwal. CBS Case 180311. June 2018.


• "Upgrading Outputs Means Upgrading Inputs." With Paulo Bastos and Joana Silva. VoxDev, Feb. 2018.


• "Incentivising Technology Adoption in Pakistani Firms." With David Atkin, Azam Chaudhry, and Amit Khandelwal. VoxDev, Nov. 2017.


• "Improving Payroll-Tax Compliance Through Decentralized Monitoring," VoxDev. June 2017.


• WTO Global Diagues Lecture: "Trade, the Wage Premium, and Inequality in Developing Countries." Dec. 20, 2016. Short summary.


• "How Labor Standards Can Be Good for Growth," Harvard Business Revew (online), April 27, 2016. (pdf)


• “Estructura Industrial e Innovación: Notas para una Nueva Estrategia de Desarrollo Industrial en México.” Boletin Informativo Techint, Edición Especial, Oct. 2013. [English version: “Industrial Structure and Innovation: Notes Toward a New Strategy for Industrial Development in Mexico.”] Appendix. (.bib)


• “Heterogeneous Firms, Trade and the Links to Growth,” Plenary talk at International Growth Centre (IGC) Growth Week 2012 (slides).


• “Diferencias de Precios de los Insumos de Origen Nacional y Extranjero en la Industria Colombiana.” With Gilma Beatriz Ferreira Villegas, Maurice Kugler, Germán Pérez Hernández, and Luis Miguel Suarez Cruz. Revista ib de la Información Básica, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 72-84, Dec. 2011.


• Comment on “The Effect of Mexican Workforce Migration on the Mexican Maquiladora Labor Market,” by Scott E. Atkinson and Marilyn Ibarra, Economía, vol. 8, no. 1, Fall 2007.


• Comment on “Globalization, Migration and Development: The Role of Mexican Migrant Remittances,” by Ernesto López-Córdova. Economía, vol. 6, no. 1, Fall 2005.

• SIPA INAF U8145: Advanced Economic Development for International Affairs, Spring 2021
• Econ G6306: Industrial Development, Spring 2021, Syllabus
• Development Seminar & Colloquium Schedule
• Notes for potential PhD advisees
• Notes for applicants to SIPA or Econ PhD programs

• Center for Development Economics and Policy (CDEP)
• International Growth Centre (IGC)
• Bureau for Research in the Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD)