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Author: Antoine Gervais Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 38
Book Description
This paper quantifies the separate contributions of product quality and technical efficiency in explaining variation in export outcomes across U.S. manufacturing plants. Unlike previous plant-level studies that rely on unit values, I obtain direct measures of idiosyncratic demand from price and quantity information. I find substantial across-plant heterogeneity in demand and, consistent with the quality interpretation, demand is positively correlated with advertising expenditures, wage rate and material costs. I use this variation to explain across-plant heterogeneity in export outcomes. The results show that, in addition to productivity, idiosyncratic demand are important determinant of selection into exporting and foreign sales.
Author: Antoine Gervais Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 38
Book Description
This paper quantifies the separate contributions of product quality and technical efficiency in explaining variation in export outcomes across U.S. manufacturing plants. Unlike previous plant-level studies that rely on unit values, I obtain direct measures of idiosyncratic demand from price and quantity information. I find substantial across-plant heterogeneity in demand and, consistent with the quality interpretation, demand is positively correlated with advertising expenditures, wage rate and material costs. I use this variation to explain across-plant heterogeneity in export outcomes. The results show that, in addition to productivity, idiosyncratic demand are important determinant of selection into exporting and foreign sales.
Author: Gianmarco I. P. Ottaviano Publisher: ISBN: Category : Business cycles Languages : en Pages : 28
Book Description
This paper investigates the role that the entry and exit of heterogeneous firms plays in shaping aggregate fluctuations in economic activity. In so doing, it develops a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model in which procyclical entry and countercyclical exit along a real business cycle lead to endogenous cyclical movements in average firm productivity. These movements stem from a composition effect due to the reallocation of market shares among firms with different levels of efficiency and affect the propagation of exogenous technological shocks. Numerical analysis suggests that existing models with representative firms may overstate the actual role of procyclical entry and exit in imperfectly competitive markets as a propagation mechanism of exogenous technology shocks. The reason is that procyclical entry and countercyclical exit disproportionately involve less efficiency firms whose impact on aggregate economic activity is hampered by their smaller size -- National Bureau of Economic Research web site.
Author: Somik V. Lall Publisher: World Bank Publications ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 36
Book Description
A study of variations in technical efficiency across four industrial sectors in India shows that managerial effectiveness significantly influences efficiency and that considerable benefits derive from location within established industrial clusters for particular industries. Liberalization and globalization are likely to bring significant productivity gains even in low-technology industries as managers gear up to meet the challenges of competition.Lall and Rodrigo examine technical efficiency variation across four industrial sectors in India, using a stochastic production frontier technique. The results are comparable to technical efficiency distribution patterns obtained in other countries. The authors examine heterogeneity in firm-level efficiency against internal, firm-level characteristics and against external characteristics (industry and location).The results suggest that managerial effectiveness significantly influences efficiency and that considerable benefits derive from location within established industrial clusters for particular industries. The methodology and findings indicate that the study of industry-specific technical efficiency patterns is a useful analytical tool for tracking domestic firms' response to liberalization and the advance of market forces.An important policy implication of Lall and Rodrigo's results: There is considerable room for efficiency gains through better organization and management of production processes and improved supply chain management, even in the highly organized corporate sector. These gains could be achieved by purely internal learning processes with no extra investment in physical plant or equipment, or with the help of outside consultants, or through business alliances with partners from industrial countries (a rising trend).The results also show that greater technical efficiency correlates with better energy use and higher investments in plant management. How firms can be induced to undertake such investments in the software of production is an important issue. Liberalization and globalization are likely to bring significant productivity gains even in low-technology industries as managers gear up to meet the challenges of competition.This paper - a product of Infrastructure and Environment, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to understand the role of economic geography and urbanization in the development process.
Author: Andrew B. Bernard Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
This paper examines how country, industry and firm characteristics interact in general equilibrium to determine nations' responses to trade liberalization. When firms possess heterogeneous productivity, countries differ in relative factor abundance and industries vary in factor intensity, falling trade costs induce reallocations of resources both within and across industries and countries. These reallocations generate substantial job turnover in all sectors, spur relatively more creative destruction in comparative advantage industries than comparative disadvantage industries, and magnify ex ante comparative advantage to create additional welfare gains from trade. The relative ascendance of high-productivity firms within industries boosts aggregate productivity and drives down consumer prices. In contrast with the neoclassical model, these price declines dampen and can even reverse the real wage losses of scarce factors as countries liberalize.
Author: Somik V. Lall Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 36
Book Description
The authors examine technical efficiency variation across four industrial sectors in India, using a stochastic production frontier technique. The results are comparable to technical efficiency distribution patterns obtained in other countries. The authors examine heterogeneity in firm-level efficiency against internal, firm-level characteristics and against external characteristics (industry and location). The results suggest that managerial effectiveness significantly influences efficiency and that considerable benefits derive from location within established industrial clusters for particular industries. The methodology and findings indicate that the study of industry-specific technical efficiency patterns is a useful analytical tool for tracking domestic firms' response to liberalization and the advance of market forces. An important policy implication of the authors' results: There is considerable room for efficiency gains through better organization and management of production processes and improved supply chain management, even in the highly organized corporate sector. These gains could be achieved by purely internal learning processes with no extra investment in physical plant or equipment, or with the help of outside consultants, or through business alliances with partners from industrial countries (a rising trend). The results also show that greater technical efficiency correlates with better energy use and higher investments in plant management. How firms can be induced to undertake such investments in the "software" of production is an important issue. Liberalization and globalization are likely to bring significant productivity gains even in low-technology industries as managers gear up to meet the challenges of competition.
Author: Allen Tran Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 141
Book Description
Macroeconomic models are often estimated with aggregate data, aligning the aggregated behavior of firms and households in models to the data. However, using aggregate data alone can overlook important details of firm behavior that are crucial for understanding issues in macroeconomics. In this dissertation, I use data on firms at the micro-level to more accurately capture firms behavior and their interactions with one another. This approach is applied to answer questions that relate to the monetary policy transmission mechanism, economic growth from new entrants and welfare gains from new technology. A substantial literature exists which suggests that imperfect information across firms is capable of generating large monetary non-neutralities. In Chapter One, the level of imperfect information is taken from micro-data and used to discipline a standard menu cost model augmented with information frictions. In the model, imperfect information has a negligible effect and real responses to a monetary shock are small and transient in contrast to the bulk of the imperfect information literature. The selection effect dominates the effects of imperfect information as the level of dispersion in inflation expectations in the data is tiny. This result still holds even when the level of dispersion is set to that of the maximal observed levels of dispersion. Chapter Two presents data that suggests new entering establishments compete for customers, rather than inputs in order to grow. Consistent with the data, I present a model where customers satisfice in forming relationships with establishments in the presence of search frictions. The extent of these search frictions is a new margin that affects selection and allocative efficiency. As search becomes less random and more directed, customers are less willing to satisfice, improving allocative efficiency and inducing exit of slower growing firms. When search frictions in product markets are increased to match establishment dynamics in Chile, output falls by roughly 14 per cent relative to the model calibrated to the US, reflecting decreased allocative efficiency. Chapter Three studies the impact of online retail on aggregate welfare. I develop a new measure of store level retail productivity and with a spatial model, calculate each store's equilibrium response to increased competitive pressure from online retailers. From counterfactual exercises mimicking improvements in shipping and increased internet access, I estimate that improvements in online retail increased aggregate welfare from retail activities by 13.4 per cent. Roughly two-thirds of the increase can be attributed to welfare improvements holding fixed market shares, with the remainder due to reallocation. Surprisingly, 8.2 percent of firms actually benefit as they absorb market share from closed stores. Finally, I estimate that the proposed Marketplace Fairness Act would claw back roughly one-third of sales that would otherwise have gone to online retailers between 2007-12.
Author: Colin Hottman Publisher: ISBN: Category : Business enterprises Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
We estimate a structural model of heterogeneous multiproduct firms to examine the sources of firm heterogeneity emphasized in the recent trade and macro literatures. Using Nielsen barcode data on prices and sales, we estimate elasticities of substitution within and between firms, and use the estimated model to recover unobserved qualities, marginal costs and markups. We find that variation in firm quality and product scope explains at least four fifths of the variation in firm sales. Most firms are well approximated by the monopolistic competition benchmark of constant markups, but the largest firms that account for most of aggregate sales depart substantially from this benchmark. Although the output of multiproduct firms is differentiated, cannibalization is quantitatively important for the largest firms. This imperfect substitutability of products within firms, and the fact that larger firms supply more products than smaller firms, implies that standard productivity measures are not independent of demand system assumptions and probably dramatically understate the relative productivity of the largest firms.
Author: Antoine Gervais
Author: Antoine Gervais
Author: Magnus Kellermann
Author: 
Author: Gianmarco I. P. Ottaviano
Author: Somik V. Lall
Author: Andrew B. Bernard
Author: Somik V. Lall
Author: Astrid Cullmann
Author: Allen Tran
Author: Colin Hottman