📉 Na de energieprijsschok hebben energie-intensieve bedrijven zich nog niet hersteld. Wat zijn de belemmeringen en oplossingen? ✍️ Je leest het in de nieuwe NBB-blog van Gert Bijnens, Cédric Duprez en John Hutchinson 👉 ow.ly/lHJh50TGwBo

New paper: "What Does Consulting Do?" w/ Gert Bijnens, Simon Jäger Consulting is a storied but opaque industry. Our VAT-based B2B data permit the 1st comprehensive study: Which firms buy consulting? What happens when they do? nber.org/papers/w34072 eml.berkeley.edu/~schoefer/scho…

Super cool paper!

Great new paper which finds that—against the snark—management consulting does make firms more productive (at least in Belgium).

This is a really exciting paper. Since consultants are often hired by failing firms, we will get biased estimates if we approach it naively. RCTs are incredibly expensive. They use super detailed firm data plus diff-in-diff, which is honestly fairly convincing.

Companies that hire consulting firms see large increases in labor productivity and also large increases of wages, with no decline in labor share or value added. It seems like a lot of the more nihilist theories of why companies hire consultants are not true on average!

Whoa

I’ve been waiting for someone to write this paper, glad to see this all-star team pull it off. Looks like consulting does add direct value, contrary to what many academics (including myself) have thought. (My prior was consulting solved agency issues w/in firms).

Very cool careful paper that shows that management consulting has a direct, positive (but small) effect on businesses in Belgium. Companies spend 3% of their revenue on engagements, and get "positive effects on labor productivity of 3.6% over five years" and increases in wages.

Contrary to the trope that consultants borrow your watch to tell you the time (and keep it) or the assumption they’re hired for internal political reasons, ingenious research by Gert Bijnens et al finds they boost profitability (and not at workers’ expense): buff.ly/KE6ftQC

Are consultants really just a waste of human skin? on.ft.com/4fbo521

Are consultants really utterly pointless? ft.com/content/bacf89… via Financial Times

This is easier to believe than the alternative hypothesis that consulting is a longstanding charade that helps provide corporate cover.

What does consulting do? marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolu…

New CEPR Discussion Paper - DP20501 What Does Consulting Do? Gert Bijnens Banque nationale de Belgique Nationale Bank van België, Simon Jäger, Benjamin Schoefer ow.ly/aU7F50Ww2eJ #CEPR_IO #CEPR_LE #CEPR_MG #CEPR_OE #EconTwitter

What does consulting do? Lots of strongly held views, very limited data to answer the question. In new NBER paper, Gert Bijnens Benjamin Schoefer and I shed light on this question using the first economy-wide data on consulting relationships (based on VAT-based B2B data). More👇

Toni Erdmann und Admin-Daten? Die Frankfurter Allgemeine bringt's zusammen! Alexander Wulfers zu unserem neuen Forschungspapier "What Does Consulting Do?" mit Gert Bijnens und Benjamin Schoefer, indem wir uns mit belgischen Daten anschauen, welche Firmen Consultants nutzen und was passiert, wenn sie das tun