LEOH - Lectures on the Economics of Organizations and Human Resources

LEOH 2022

Goethe Universität Frankfurt September 5-6, 2022

Prof. Andrea Prat (Columbia University)

„Organizational Capital: Culture, Purpose, and Leadership within the Firm“

Andrea Prat (Columbia University)

Andrea Prat is the Richard Paul Richman Professor of Business at Columbia Business School and Professor of Economics at the Department of Economics, Columbia University. After receiving his PhD in Economics from Stanford University in 1997, he taught at Tilburg University and the London School of Economics. He joined Columbia in 2012.

Professor Prat's work focuses on organizational economics and political economy. His current research in organizational economics explores - through theoretical modeling, field experiments, and data analysis - issues such as organizational design, corporate leadership, employee motivation, and optimal disclosure.

He is the author of numerous articles in leading journals in economics including the American Economic Review, Econometrica, the Journal of Political Economy, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and the Review of Economic Studies. Professor Prat was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2011 and a Fellow of the Econometric Society in 2013.

Title: Organizational Capital: Culture, Purpose, and Leadership within the Firm

The success of today’s firms depends on its organizational capital, a constellation of soft production factors like corporate culture, workers’ purpose, leadership style, and communication effectiveness. These lectures discuss how organizational economists are modeling and estimating these factors.

On the theory side, we will review models of organizational language and organizational capital. On the empirical side, we will explore two approaches: machine learning analysis of large corporate datasets and randomized control trials within firms.

The lectures are organized around three topics:

1. Communication: Coding theory: What is an optimal organizational language? Using machine learning to measure organizational languages; Career concerns and effective information transmission: the Fed example.

2. Leadership and organizational capital: A model of how CEOs affect firm culture; Empirical analysis of CEO behavior; What happens when the CEO changes?

3. Organizational culture: A cross-firm analysis of purpose: can we measure it? Does it matter for performance? An experiment on culture: Can a firm change its culture? Should it change its management practices too?

About LEOH

LEOH - the "Lectures on the Economics of Organizations and Human Resources" - is a series of bi-annual summer schools for graduate students and faculty in economics and management science.

From 2019 onwards, LEOH officially serves as the summer academy of the Committee for Organizational Economics. LEOH takes place bi-annually in conjunction with the workshop of the Committee. The respective LEOH lecturer is an internationally renowned scholar who has contributed substantially to the economics of organizations and human resources. LEOH consists of lectures and poster sessions where participants may present research projects.

However, at LEOH there are also a number of other tenured professors in attendance. Hence, there is ample opportunity for feedback and networking. LEOH participants may also apply for attending the Committee’s workshop and for presenting a paper there.

LEOH was founded in 2015 by Committee members Florian Englmaier, Guido Friebel, and Dirk Sliwka.

LEOH 2022, Frankfurt (Prof. Andrea Prat, Columbia)

LEOH 2019, Berlin (Prof. Tore Ellingsen, Stockholm)

LEOH 2018, Hamburg (Prof. Antoinette Schoar, MIT)

LEOH 2017, Köln (Prof. Botond Koszegi, CEU Budapest)

LEOH 2016, München (Prof. Oliver Hart, Harvard University)

LEOH 2015, Frankfurt (Prof. Robert Gibbons, MIT)