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 "firms and development" -- applied microeconomic studies of firm behavior in developing countries. Much of my work focuses on the process of upgrading, understood broadly to include learning, technology adoption, quality improvement, and product innovation. The fact that many advanced technologies and products already exist in developed countries would seem to confer advantages on developing-country firms, which are mainly trying to catch up to the world frontier rather than push it forward, but for many firms those advantages remain elusive. I have been trying to understand why.

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Mailing address: 420 W. 118th St., Room 1022, MC 3308, New York, NY 10027
Office: IAB 1119
Tel: (212) 854-4428
Email: [email protected]
Social media: LinkedIn, X/Twitter, BlueSky

Office hours: Tues. 5:10-7pm or by appointment (please email)

• "Quality Upgrading in Global Supply Chains: Evidence from Colombian Coffee.” With Rocco Macchiavello (r) Josepa Miquel-Florensa (r) Nicolás de Roux (r) Mario Bernasconi (r) Patrick Farrell. Dec. 2025. Revise and resubmit, Quarterly Journal of Economics. (NBER #34610, CEPR #20981.)


• "Social Learning among Urban Manufacturing Firms: Energy-Efficient Motors in Bangladesh.” With Ritam Chaurey, Gaurav Nayyar, and Siddharth Sharma. Sept. 2025. Appendix. Reject and resubmit, Quarterly Journal of Economics. (NBER #34296, CEPR #20713.)


• Video: Speeding Up Green Technology Adoption: Lessons from Bangladesh.


• "What Do Market-Access Subsidies Do? Experimental Evidence from Tunisia.” With Nadia Ali, Giacomo De Giorgi, and Aminur Rahman. July 2025. Appendix. Revise and resubmit, American Economic Review. (NBER #33985, CEPR #20398.)


• "Estimating Production Functions in Differentiated-Product Industries with Quantity Information and External Instruments.” With Nicolás de Roux, Marcela Eslava, and Santiago Franco. Oct. 2024. Appendix. Supplementary materials. Revise and resubmit, Journal of the European Economic Association.

• "Wedges: A Microeconomic Perspective on Misallocation.” With Lauren Falcao Bergquist and Danial Lashkari. Forthcoming in Handbook of Development Economics, vol. 6. (NBER #34756, CEPR #21034.)


• STEG 2026 Conference keynote (from 1:56.00 to 2:52.30), Jan. 2026.


• "Employment Impacts of the CHIPS Act.” With Bilge Erten and Joseph Stiglitz. Forthcoming in Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Fall 2025. Appendix. (NBER #34625, CEPR #20982.)


• NBER Digest article, March 2026.
• Brookings 2-minute explainer video.
• Brookings non-technical summary.
• Brookings podcast.
• Brookings presentation: video (from 11:59 to 28:34), slides.


• "Exports and Wage Premiums: Evidence from Mexican Employer-Employee Data.” With Judith A. Frías, David S. Kaplan, and David Alfaro-Serrano. Review of Economics and Statistics, v. 106, no. 2, pp. 305-321, March 2024. Appendix.


• "Firm-Level Upgrading in Developing Countries.” Journal of Economic Literature, v. 61, no. 4, pp. 1410-1464, Dec. 2023.


• VoxDev column, Ideas 4 India column (Hindi translation).
• NBER Summer Institute 2022 DEV Master Lecture: video, slides.


• "North-South Displacement Effects of Environmental Regulation: The Case of Battery Recycling.” With Shinsuke Tanaka and Kensuke Teshima. American Economic Review: Insights, v. 4, no. 3, pp. 271-288, Sept. 2022 (lead article). Appendix.


• VoxDev column, VoxEU column.
• Media coverage: Trade Talks podcast, NBER Digest, AEA Chart of the Week, The Weeds podcast (at 49:14).


• “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), The Economist
• 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) Appendix B. Erratum.


• “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)