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Modeling and measuring organization capital

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Author Info
Andrew Atkeson
Patrick J. Kehoe

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Abstract

Manufacturing plants have a clear life cycle: they are born small, grow substantially as they age, and eventually die. Economists have long thought that this life cycle is driven by the accumulation of plant-specific knowledge, here called organization capital. Theory suggests that where plants are in the life cycle determines the size of the payments, or dividends, plant owners receive from organization capital. These payments are compensation for the interest cost to plant owners of waiting for their plants to grow. We build a quantitative growth model of the life cycle of plants and use it, along with U.S. data, to infer the overall size of these payments. They turn out to be quite large—more than one-third the size of the payments plant owners receive from physical capital, net of new investment, and more than 40% of payments from all forms of intangible capital.

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Paper provided by Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis in its series Staff Report with number 291.

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Date of creation: 2005
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Publication status: Published in Journal of Political Economy (Vol. 113, No. 5, October 2005, pp. 1026-1053)
Handle: RePEc:fip:fedmsr:291

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  1. Quantitative Macroeconomics and Real Business Cycles (QM&RBC)
References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
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  3. Rosen, Sherwin, 1972. "Learning by Experience as Joint Production," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 86(3), pages 366-82, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Hopenhayn, Hugo & Rogerson, Richard, 1993. "Job Turnover and Policy Evaluation: A General Equilibrium Analysis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(5), pages 915-38, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Bahk, Byong-Hong & Gort, Michael, 1993. "Decomposing Learning by Doing in New Plants," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(4), pages 561-83, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Jovanovic, Boyan & Moffitt, Robert, 1990. "An Estimate of a Sectoral Model of Labor Mobility," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(4), pages 827-52, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  7. Ericson, Richard & Pakes, Ariel, 1995. "Markov-Perfect Industry Dynamics: A Framework for Empirical Work," Review of Economic Studies, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 62(1), pages 53-82, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  8. Prescott, Edward C & Visscher, Michael, 1980. "Organization Capital," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 88(3), pages 446-61, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  9. J. Bradford Jensen & Robert H. McGuckin & Kevin Stiroh, 2000. "The Impact of Vintage and Survival on Productivity: Evidence from Cohorts of U.S. Manufacturing Plants," Economics Program Working Papers 00-01, The Conference Board, Economics Program. [Downloadable!]
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  10. Robert E. Lucas Jr., 1978. "On the Size Distribution of Business Firms," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 9(2), pages 508-523, Autumn. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  11. Jovanovic, Boyan, 1979. "Job Matching and the Theory of Turnover," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 87(5), pages 972-90, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  12. Topel, Robert H, 1991. "Specific Capital, Mobility, and Wages: Wages Rise with Job Seniority," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(1), pages 145-76, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Boyan Jovanovic & Peter L. Rousseau, 2008. "Specific Capital and Technological Variety," NBER Working Papers 13998, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Nezih Guner & Gustavo Ventura & Xu Yi, . "Macroeconomic Implications of Size-Dependent Policies," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  3. Aruga, Osamu, 2007. "Conventional or New? Optimal Investment Allocation across Vintages of Technology," MPRA Paper 6043, University Library of Munich, Germany. [Downloadable!]
  4. Adnrew J. Clarke & Alok Johri, 2008. "Pro-cyclical Solow Residuals without Technology Shocks," Department of Economics Working Papers 2008-02, McMaster University. [Downloadable!]
  5. Levon Barseghyan & Riccardo DiCecio, 2006. "Heterogeneous firms, productivity and poverty traps," Working Papers 2005-068, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. [Downloadable!]
  6. Lee E. Ohanian, 2002. "Why did productivity fall so much during the Great Depression?," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, issue Spr. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  7. Jan Eeckhout & Boyan Jovanovic, 2002. "Knowledge Spillovers and Inequality," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1290-1307, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  8. Ariel Burstein & Alexander Monge-Naranjo, 2007. "Foreign Know-How, Firm Control, and the Income of Developing Countries," NBER Working Papers 13073, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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