American Economic Review Vol. 93 No. 3 2003
Make Versus Buy in Trucking:Asset Ownership, Job Design, and Information
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.
- DOI
- 10.1257/000282803322156981
- Volume
- 93
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 551-572
- Language
- en
- Sources
- bibtex:phds-export.bib crossref openalex