The goal of this workshop is to synthesize existing work in the intersection of organizational and development economics, with a focus on firms and political organizations (e.g. bureaucracies), and to identify promising directions for future research. For example, the objectives of governments in developing economies may differ from those of developed nations, e.g. due to different levels of poverty, uncertainty, instability, and so on. These objectives determine the incentives that governments design for bureaucrats, which in turn influence the selection of bureaucrats as well as bureaucratic performance and the quality of policy-making. All of this directly affects the welfare of citizens. Establishing how organizations shape and are shaped by poverty and inequality is essential to understanding the persistence of both. It is also a key step in understanding the conditions under which welfare-improving institutional change could and would happen in developing countries.

In this workshop we'll discuss several questions I think should be at the forefront of organizational economics, including: what are important differences in organizational structure, design, and efficiency across developed and developing economies? How does organizational design influence decision-making (especially in governance) and information generation and transmission (especially in media)? What are concrete implications for policy and welfare in developing and developed economies? We'll talk about how they've been studied so far, and what I hope future research explores. I hope to give you a sense of why I think these are interesting, salient, and socially important questions that economists have a unique ability to investigate.