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Competition, Firm Innovation, and Growth under Imperfect Technology Spillovers
July 2024
Working Paper Number:
CES-24-40
We study how friction in learning others' technology, termed 'imperfect technology spillovers,' incentivizes firms to use different types of innovation and impacts the implications of competition through changes in innovation composition. We build an endogenous growth model in which multi-product firms enhance their products via internal innovation and enter new product markets through external innovation. When learning others' technology takes time due to this friction, increased competitive pressure leads firms with technological advantages to intensify internal innovation to protect their markets, thereby reducing others' external innovation. Using the U.S. administrative firm-level data, we provide regression results supporting the model predictions. Our findings highlight the importance of strategic firm innovation choices and changes in their composition in shaping the aggregate implications of competition.
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Temperature and Local Industry Concentration
October 2023
Working Paper Number:
CES-23-51
We use plant-level data from the US Census of Manufacturers to study the short and long run effects of temperature on manufacturing activity. We document that temperature shocks significantly increase energy costs and lower the productivity of small manufacturing plants, while large plants are mostly unaffected. In US counties that experienced higher increases in average temperatures between the 1980s and the 2010s, these heterogeneous effects have led to higher concentration of manufacturing activity within large plants, and a reallocation of labor from small to large manufacturing establishments. We offer a preliminary discussion of potential mechanisms explaining why large manufacturing firms might be better equipped for long-run adaptation to climate change, including their ability to hedge across locations, easier access to finance, and higher managerial skills.
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The Changing Firm and Country Boundaries of US Manufacturers in Global Value Chains
July 2023
Working Paper Number:
CES-23-38
This paper documents how US firms organize goods production across firm and country boundaries. Most US firms that perform physical transformation tasks in-house using foreign manufacturing plants in 2007 also own US manufacturing plants; moreover manufacturing comprises their main domestic activity. By contrast, 'factoryless goods producers' outsource all physical transformation tasks to arm's-length contractors, focusing their in-house efforts on design and marketing. This distinct firm type is missing from standard analyses of manufacturing, growing in importance, and increasingly reliant on foreign suppliers. Physical transformation 'within-the-firm' thus coincides with substantial physical transformation 'within-the-country,' whereas its performance 'outside-the-firm' often also implies 'outside-the-country.' Despite these differences, factoryless goods producers and firms with foreign and domestic manufacturing plants both employ relatively high shares of US knowledge workers. These patterns call for new models and data to capture the potential for foreign production to support domestic innovation, which US firms leverage around the world.
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On The Role of Trademarks: From Micro Evidence to Macro Outcomes
March 2023
Working Paper Number:
CES-23-16
What are the effects of trademarks on the U.S. economy? Evidence from comprehensive firm-level data on trademark registrations and outcomes suggests that trademarks protect firm value and are associated with higher firm growth and marketing activity. Motivated by this evidence, trademarks are introduced in a general equilibrium framework to quantify their aggregate effects. In the model, firms invest in product quality and marketing to build a cus tomer base subject to depreciation. Firms can register trademarks to protect their customer base and reduce the cost of informing consumers. The model's predictions on the incidence and timing of trademark registrations, as well as firm growth and advertising expenditures, are consistent with the empirical evidence. Analysis of the calibrated model indicates that the U.S. economy with trademarks generates higher product variety, quality, and welfare, along with higher concentration, compared to the counterfactual economy with no trademarks.
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The Characteristics and Geographic Distribution of Robot Hubs in U.S. Manufacturing Establishments
March 2023
Working Paper Number:
CES-23-14
We use data from the Annual Survey of Manufactures to study the characteristics and geography of investments in robots across U.S. manufacturing establishments. We find that robotics adoption and robot intensity (the number of robots per employee) is much more strongly related to establishment size than age. We find that establishments that report having robotics have higher capital expenditures, including higher information technology (IT) capital expenditures. Also, establishments are more likely to have robotics if other establishments in the same Core-Based Statistical Area (CBSA) and industry also report having robotics. The distribution of robots is highly skewed across establishments' locations. Some locations, which we call Robot Hubs, have far more robots than one would expect even after accounting for industry and manufacturing employment. We characterize these Robot Hubs along several industry, demographic, and institutional dimensions. The presence of robot integrators and higher levels of union membership are positively correlated with being a Robot Hub.
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Grouped Variation in Factor Shares: An Application to Misallocation
August 2022
Working Paper Number:
CES-22-33
A striking feature of micro-level plant data is the presence of significant variation in factor cost shares across plants within an industry. We develop a methodology to decompose cost shares into idiosyncratic and group-specific components. In particular, we carry out a cluster analysis to recover the number and membership of groups using breaks in the dispersion of factor cost shares across plants. We apply our methodology to Chilean plant-level data and find that group-specific variation accounts for approximately one-third of the variation in factor shares across firms. We also study the implications ofthese groups in cost shares on the gains from eliminating misallocation. We place bounds on their importance and find that ignoring them can overstate the gains from eliminating misallocation by up to one-third.
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Decomposing Aggregate Productivity
July 2022
Working Paper Number:
CES-22-25
In this note, we evaluate the sensitivity of commonly-used decompositions for aggregate productivity. Our analysis spans the universe of U.S. manufacturers from 1977 to 2012 and we find that, even holding the data and form of the production function fixed, results on aggregate productivity are extremely sensitive to how productivity at the firm level is measured. Even qualitative statements about the levels of aggregate productivity and the sign of the covariance between productivity and size are highly dependent on how production function parameters are estimated. Despite these difficulties, we uncover some consistent facts about productivity growth: (1) labor productivity is consistently higher and less error-prone than measures of multi-factor productivity; (2) most productivity growth comes from growth within firms, rather than from reallocation across firms; (3) what growth does come from reallocation appears to be driven by net entry, primarily from the exit of relatively less-productive firms.
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Automation and the Workforce: A Firm-Level View from the 2019 Annual Business Survey
April 2022
Authors:
John Haltiwanger,
Lucia Foster,
Emin Dinlersoz,
Nikolas Zolas,
Daron Acemoglu,
Catherine Buffington,
Nathan Goldschlag,
Zachary Kroff,
David Beede,
Gary Anderson,
Eric Childress,
Pascual Restrepo
Working Paper Number:
CES-22-12R
This paper describes the adoption of automation technologies by US firms across all economic sectors by leveraging a new module introduced in the 2019 Annual Business Survey, conducted by the US Census Bureau in partnership with the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES). The module collects data from over 300,000 firms on the use of five advanced technologies: AI, robotics, dedicated equipment, specialized software, and cloud computing. The adoption of these technologies remains low (especially for AI and robotics), varies substantially across industries, and concentrates on large and young firms. However, because larger firms are much more likely to adopt them, 12-64% of US workers and 22-72% of manufacturing workers are exposed to these technologies. Firms report a variety of motivations for adoption, including automating tasks previously performed by labor. Consistent with the use of these technologies for automation, adopters have higher labor productivity and lower labor shares. In particular, the use of these technologies is associated with a 11.4% higher labor productivity, which accounts for 20'30% of the difference in labor productivity between large firms and the median firm in an industry. Adopters report that these technologies raised skill requirements and led to greater demand for skilled labor, but brought limited or ambiguous effects to their employment levels.
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Import Competition and Firms' Internal Networks
September 2021
Working Paper Number:
CES-21-28
Using administrative data on U.S. multisector firms, we document a cross-sectoral propagation of the import competition from China ('China shock') through firms' internal networks: Employment of an establishment in a given industry is negatively affected by China shock that hits establishments in other industries within the same firm. This indirect propagation channel impacts both manufacturing and non-manufacturing establishments, and it operates primarily through the establishment exit. We explore a range of explanations for our findings, highlighting the role of within-firm trade across sectors, scope of production, and establishment size. At the sectoral aggregate level, China shock that propagates through firms' internal networks has a sizable impact on industry-level employment dynamics.
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Recall and Response: Relationship Adjustments to Adverse Information Shocks
March 2020
Working Paper Number:
CES-20-13R
How resilient are U.S. buyer-foreign supplier relationships to new information about product defects? We construct a novel dataset of U.S. consumer-product recalls sourced from foreign suppliers between 1995 and 2013. Using an event-study approach, we find that compared to control relationships, buyers that experience recalls temporarily reduce their probability of trading with the suppliers of the recalled products by 17%. The reduction is much larger for new than established buyer'supplier relationships. Buyers that experience a recall are more likely to add other suppliers to their portfolios, diversifying supplier-specific risk in the aftermath of a recall; this effect, too, is larger for buyers impacted by recalls in new relationships. There is a long lag ' up to two years ' before diversification, consistent with a high cost of establishing new relationships.
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