Products and Productivity
August 2008
Working Paper Number:
CES-08-22
Abstract
When firms make decisions about which product to manufacture at a more disaggregated level than observed in the data, measured firm productivity will reflect both true differences in productivity and non-random decisions about which products to manufacture. This paper examines a model of industry equilibrium where firms endogenously sort across products. We use the model to characterize the direction and magnitude of the resulting bias in productivity and to trace the implications for evaluating the aggregate effects of policy reforms such as industry deregulation. The endogenous sorting of firms across products provides a new source of reallocation and leads to biased measures of deregulation's impact on firm and aggregate productivity.
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:
production,
endogeneity,
macroeconomic,
industrial,
manufacturing,
product,
industry productivity,
produce,
monopolistically,
heterogeneity,
regulation,
bias,
industry variation,
productivity firms,
firms productivity,
aggregate productivity
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National Science Foundation,
Standard Industrial Classification,
Longitudinal Research Database,
Center for Economic Studies,
Total Factor Productivity,
National Bureau of Economic Research,
Boston Research Data Center,
Special Sworn Status
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