IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bca/bocawp/17-27.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Firm Heterogeneity, Technological Adoption, and Urbanization: Theory and Measurement

Author

Listed:
  • Alex Chernoff

Abstract

This paper develops a model of firm heterogeneity, technological adoption, and urbanization. In the model, welfare is measured by household real income, and urbanization is measured by population density. I use the model to derive statistics that measure the effect of a new technology on productivity, welfare, and urbanization. The empirical application of the paper estimates these effects using nineteenth-century firmlevel data on mechanical steam power in the Canadian manufacturing sector, and townshiplevel population data. The results indicate that the introduction of steam power increased productivity by 22.8 percent, and welfare by 6.0 percent. By comparing the model predicted change in urbanization to observed population density growth, I find that the introduction of mechanical steam power accounts for approximately 6.2 percent of the observed variation in urbanization during this period.

Suggested Citation

  • Alex Chernoff, 2017. "Firm Heterogeneity, Technological Adoption, and Urbanization: Theory and Measurement," Staff Working Papers 17-27, Bank of Canada.
    • Handle: RePEc:bca:bocawp:17-27
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bankofcanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/swp2017-27.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Economic models; Productivity; Regional economic developments;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O14 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Industrialization; Manufacturing and Service Industries; Choice of Technology
    • R13 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - General Equilibrium and Welfare Economic Analysis of Regional Economies
    • N61 - Economic History - - Manufacturing and Construction - - - U.S.; Canada: Pre-1913

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bca:bocawp:17-27. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bocgvca.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.