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Papers written by Author(s): 'Peter J. Klenow'

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  • Working Paper

    Entry Costs Rise with Growth

    October 2024

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-24-63

    Over time and across states in the U.S., the number of firms is more closely tied to overall employment than to output per worker. In many models of firm dynamics, trade, and growth with a free entry condition, these facts imply that the costs of creating a new firm increase sharply with productivity growth. This increase in entry costs can stem from the rising cost of labor used in entry and weak or negative knowledge spillovers from prior entry. Our findings suggest that productivity-enhancing policies will not induce firm entry, thereby limiting the total impact of such policies on welfare.
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  • Working Paper

    Misallocation or Mismeasurement?

    February 2020

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-20-07

    The ratio of revenue to inputs differs greatly across plants within countries such as the U.S. and India. Such gaps may reflect misallocation which hinders aggregate productivity. But differences in measured average products need not reflect differences in true marginal products. We propose a way to estimate the gaps in true marginal products in the presence of measurement error. Our method exploits how revenue growth is less sensitive to input growth when a plant's average products are overstated by measurement error. For Indian manufacturing from 1985'2013, our correction lowers potential gains from reallocation by 20%. For the U.S. the effect is even more dramatic, reducing potential gains by 60% and eliminating 2/3 of a severe downward trend in allocative efficiency over 1978'2013.
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  • Working Paper

    The Reallocation Myth

    April 2018

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-18-19

    There is a widely held view that much of growth in the U.S. can be attributed to reallocation from low to high productivity firms, including from exiting firms to entrants. Declining dynamism ' falling rates of reallocation and entry/exit in the U.S. ' have therefore been tied to the lackluster growth since 2005. We challenge this view. Gaps in the return to resources do not appear to have narrowed, suggesting that allocative efficiency has not improved in the U.S. in recent decades. Reallocation can also matter if it is a byproduct of innovation. However, we present evidence that most innovation comes from existing firms improving their own products rather than from entrants or fast-growing firms displacing incumbent firms. Length: 26 pages
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  • Working Paper

    Missing Growth from Creative Destruction

    April 2018

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-18-18

    Statistical agencies typically impute inflation for disappearing products based on surviving products, which may result in overstated inflation and understated growth. Using U.S. Census data, we apply two ways of assessing the magnitude of 'missing growth' for private nonfarm businesses from 1983'2013. The first approach exploits information on the market share of surviving plants. The second approach applies indirect inference to firm-level data. We find: (i) missing growth from imputation is substantial ' at least 0.6 percentage points per year; and (ii) most of the missing growth is due to creative destruction (as opposed to new varieties).
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  • Working Paper

    How Destructive is Innovation?

    January 2017

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-17-04

    Entrants and incumbents can create new products and displace the products of competitors. Incumbents can also improve their existing products. How much of aggregate productivity growth occurs through each of these channels? Using data from the U.S. Longitudinal Business Database on all non-farm private businesses from 1976'1986 and 2003'2013, we arrive at three main conclusions: First, most growth appears to come from incumbents. We infer this from the modest employment share of entering firms (defined as those less than 5 years old). Second, most growth seems to occur through improvements of existing varieties rather than creation of brand new varieties. Third, own-product improvements by incumbents appear to be more important than creative destruction. We infer this because the distribution of job creation and destruction has thinner tails than implied by a model with a dominant role for creative destruction.
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  • Working Paper

    Misallocation and Manufacturing TFP in China and India

    February 2009

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-09-04

    Resource misallocation can lower aggregate total factor productivity (TFP). We use micro data on manufacturing establishments to quantify the potential extent of misallocation in China and India compared to the U.S. Compared to the U.S., we measure sizable gaps in marginal products of labor and capital across plants within narrowly-defined industries in China and India. When capital and labor are hypothetically reallocated to equalize marginal products to the extent observed in the U.S., we calculate manufacturing TFP gains of 30-50% in China and 40-60% in India.
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