Make versus buy in trucking
Subtitle: asset ownership, job design and information
By: George P. Baker, Thomas N. Hubbard.
Contributors: Hubbard, Thomas N.; National Bureau of Economic Research.
Series: NBER working paper series ;; working paper  8727; Working paper series (National Bureau of Economic Research : Online) ;; working paper no.  8727.
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research
Published: 2002
Place of publication: Cambridge, MA
Language: eng
Format: Electronic resource
Subjects: Trucking.
Description: "Explaining patterns of asset ownership in the economy 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 (Grossman and Hart (1986)) and of job design and measurement issues (Holmstrom and Milgrom (1994))"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
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Mode of access: World Wide Web.