IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/13797.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Industrial Revolution in Services

Author

Listed:
  • Rossi-Hansberg, Esteban
  • Hsieh, Chang-Tai

Abstract

The rise in national industry concentration in the US between 1977 and 2013 is driven by a new industrial revolution in three broad non-traded sectors: services, retail, and wholesale. Sectors where national concentration is rising have increased their share of employment, and the expansion is entirely driven by the number of local markets served by firms. Firm employment per market has either increased slightly at the MSA level, or decreased substantially at the county or establishment levels. In industries with increasing concentration, the expansion into more markets is more pronounced for the top 10\% firms, but is present for the bottom 90\% as well. These trends have not been accompanied by economy-wide concentration. Top U.S. firms are increasingly specialized in sectors with rising industry concentration, but their aggregate employment share has remained roughly stable. We argue that these facts are consistent with the availability of a new set of fixed-cost technologies that enable adopters to produce at lower marginal costs in all markets. We present a simple model of firm size and market entry to describe the menu of new technologies and trace its implications.

Suggested Citation

  • Rossi-Hansberg, Esteban & Hsieh, Chang-Tai, 2019. "The Industrial Revolution in Services," CEPR Discussion Papers 13797, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:13797
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP13797
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Philippe Aghion & Antonin Bergeaud & Timo Boppart & Peter J. Klenow & Huiyu Li, 2019. "Missing Growth from Creative Destruction," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(8), pages 2795-2822, August.
    2. Jason Furman & Peter Orszag, 2018. "Slower Productivity and Higher Inequality: Are They Related?," Working Paper Series WP18-4, Peterson Institute for International Economics.
    3. Nathan Rosenberg & Manuel Trajtenberg, 2009. "A General-Purpose Technology at Work: The Corliss Steam Engine in the Late-Nineteenth-Century United States," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Nathan Rosenberg (ed.), Studies On Science And The Innovation Process Selected Works of Nathan Rosenberg, chapter 6, pages 97-135, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    4. Ryan A. Decker & John Haltiwanger & Ron S. Jarmin & Javier Miranda, 2017. "Declining Dynamism, Allocative Efficiency, and the Productivity Slowdown," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(5), pages 322-326, May.
    5. David Autor & David Dorn & Lawrence F Katz & Christina Patterson & John Van Reenen, 2020. "The Fall of the Labor Share and the Rise of Superstar Firms [“Automation and New Tasks: How Technology Displaces and Reinstates Labor”]," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 135(2), pages 645-709.
    6. Dan Cao & Erick Sager & Henry Hyatt & Toshihiko Mukoyama, 2019. "Firm Growth through New Establishments," 2019 Meeting Papers 1484, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    7. Cecile Gaubert, 2018. "Firm Sorting and Agglomeration," NBER Working Papers 24478, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Timothy F. Bresnahan & Erik Brynjolfsson & Lorin M. Hitt, 2002. "Information Technology, Workplace Organization, and the Demand for Skilled Labor: Firm-Level Evidence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 117(1), pages 339-376.
    9. Ezra Oberfield & Esteban Rossi-Hansberg & Nicholas Trachter & Pierre-Daniel Sarte, 2019. "Plants in Space," 2019 Meeting Papers 1507, Society for Economic Dynamics.
      • Rossi-Hansberg, Esteban & Oberfield, Ezra & Sarte, Pierre-Daniel & Trachter, Nicholas, 2020. "Plants in Space," CEPR Discussion Papers 14823, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
      • Ezra Oberfield & Esteban Rossi-Hansberg & Pierre-Daniel Sarte & Nicholas Trachter, 2020. "Plants in Space," NBER Working Papers 27303, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
      • Ezra Oberfield & Esteban Rossi-Hansberg & Pierre-Daniel G. Sarte & Nicholas Trachter, 2020. "Plants in Space," Working Paper 20-05, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
    10. Sharat Ganapati, 2018. "The Modern Wholesaler: Global Sourcing, Domestic Distribution, and Scale Economies," Working Papers 18-49, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    11. Esteban Rossi-Hansberg & Pierre-Daniel Sarte & Nicholas Trachter, 2021. "Diverging Trends in National and Local Concentration," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 35(1), pages 115-150.
    12. Raghuram G. Rajan & Julie Wulf, 2006. "The Flattening Firm: Evidence from Panel Data on the Changing Nature of Corporate Hierarchies," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 88(4), pages 759-773, November.
    13. repec:dau:papers:123456789/10093 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Loukas Karabarbounis & Brent Neiman, 2019. "Accounting for Factorless Income," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 33(1), pages 167-228.
    15. Gaubert, Cécile, 2018. "Firm Sorting and Agglomeration," CEPR Discussion Papers 12835, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    16. Luis Garicano & Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, 2004. "Inequality and the Organization of Knowledge," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(2), pages 197-202, May.
    17. Chad Syverson, 2017. "Challenges to Mismeasurement Explanations for the US Productivity Slowdown," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(2), pages 165-186, Spring.
    18. Hugo Hopenhayn & Julian Neira & Rish Singhania, 2022. "From Population Growth to Firm Demographics: Implications for Concentration, Entrepreneurship and the Labor Share," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 90(4), pages 1879-1914, July.
    19. Nicolas Crouzet & Janice Eberly, 2018. "Intangibles, Investment, and Efficiency," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 108, pages 426-431, May.
    20. Eve Caroli & John Van Reenen, 2001. "Skill-Biased Organizational Change? Evidence from A Panel of British and French Establishments," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 116(4), pages 1449-1492.
    21. Steven J. Davis & John Haltiwanger, 1992. "Gross Job Creation, Gross Job Destruction, and Employment Reallocation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 107(3), pages 819-863.
    22. Ramondo, Natalia, 2014. "A quantitative approach to multinational production," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(1), pages 108-122.
    23. Bart Hobijn & Boyan Jovanovic, 2001. "The Information-Technology Revolution and the Stock Market: Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1203-1220, December.
    24. Jonathan Vogel, 2008. "Spatial Competition with Heterogeneous Firms," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 116(3), pages 423-466, June.
    25. Cecile Gaubert, 2018. "Firm Sorting and Agglomeration," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(11), pages 3117-3153, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Goldin, Ian & Koutroumpis, Pantelis & Lafond, François & Winkler, Julian, 2020. "Why is productivity slowing down?," MPRA Paper 99172, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Ezra Oberfield & Esteban Rossi-Hansberg & Nicholas Trachter & Pierre-Daniel Sarte, 2019. "Plants in Space," 2019 Meeting Papers 1507, Society for Economic Dynamics.
      • Ezra Oberfield & Esteban Rossi-Hansberg & Pierre-Daniel Sarte & Nicholas Trachter, 2020. "Plants in Space," NBER Working Papers 27303, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
      • Rossi-Hansberg, Esteban & Oberfield, Ezra & Sarte, Pierre-Daniel & Trachter, Nicholas, 2020. "Plants in Space," CEPR Discussion Papers 14823, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
      • Ezra Oberfield & Esteban Rossi-Hansberg & Pierre-Daniel G. Sarte & Nicholas Trachter, 2020. "Plants in Space," Working Paper 20-05, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
    3. Feld, Lars P. & Schmidt, Christoph M. & Schnabel, Isabel & Truger, Achim & Wieland, Volker, 2019. "Den Strukturwandel meistern. Jahresgutachten 2019/20 [Dealing with Structural Change. Annual Report 2019/20]," Annual Economic Reports / Jahresgutachten, German Council of Economic Experts / Sachverständigenrat zur Begutachtung der gesamtwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung, volume 127, number 201920.
    4. Pedro Bento & Diego Restuccia, 2019. "The Role of Nonemployers in Business Dynamism and Aggregate Productivity," NBER Working Papers 25998, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Maarten de Ridder, 2022. "Market power and innovation in the intangible economy," POID Working Papers 064, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    6. Philippe Aghion & Antonin Bergeaud & Huiyu Li & Peter Klenow & Timo Boppart, 2019. "A Theory of Falling Growth and Rising Rents," 2019 Meeting Papers 458, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    7. Ben Lipsius, 2018. "Labor Market Concentration does not Explain the Falling Labor Share," 2018 Papers pli1202, Job Market Papers.
    8. Erik Brynjolfsson & Wang Jin & Kristina McElheran, 2021. "The power of prediction: predictive analytics, workplace complements, and business performance," Business Economics, Palgrave Macmillan;National Association for Business Economics, vol. 56(4), pages 217-239, October.
    9. Sergey G. Kokovin & Shamil Sharapudinov & Alexander Tarasov & Philip Ushchev, 2020. "A Theory of Monopolistic Competition with Horizontally Heterogeneous Consumers," CESifo Working Paper Series 8082, CESifo.
    10. De Ridder, Maarten, 2024. "Market power and innovation in the intangible economy," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 120285, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    11. Acosta, Camilo & Lyngemark, Ditte Håkonsson, 2021. "The internal spatial organization of firms: Evidence from Denmark," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(C).
    12. Naudé, Wim, 2020. "From the Entrepreneurial to the Ossified Economy: Evidence, Explanations and a New Perspective," GLO Discussion Paper Series 539, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    13. Marie Le Mouel & Alexander Schiersch, 2020. "Knowledge-Based Capital and Productivity Divergence," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1868, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    14. Capello, Roberta & Lenzi, Camilla & Perucca, Giovanni, 2022. "The modern Solow paradox. In search for explanations," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 166-180.
    15. Claire Brennecke & Stefan Jacewitz & Jonathan Pogach, 2022. "Shared Destinies? Small Banks and Small Business Consolidation," Research Working Paper RWP 21-19, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
    16. Kiminori Matsuyama & Philip Ushchev, 2022. "Selection and Sorting of Heterogeneous Firms through Competitive Pressures," CIRJE F-Series CIRJE-F-1189, CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo.
    17. Timo Boppart & Huiyu Li, 2021. "Productivity Slowdown: Reducing the Measure of Our Ignorance," Working Paper Series 2021-21, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    18. Naudé, Wim, 2019. "The decline in entrepreneurship in the West: Is complexity ossifying the economy?," MERIT Working Papers 2019-030, United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    19. Filippo Belloc & Gabriel Burdin & Fabio Landini, 2020. "Corporate Hierarchies and Labor Institutions," Department of Economics University of Siena 827, Department of Economics, University of Siena.
    20. Cameron LAPOINT & SAKABE Shogo, 2021. "Place-Based Policies and the Geography of Corporate Investment," Discussion papers 21059, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E23 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Production
    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • L22 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Firm Organization and Market Structure
    • L16 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Industrial Organization and Macroeconomics; Macroeconomic Industrial Structure
    • R12 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity; Interregional Trade (economic geography)

    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:cpr:ceprdp:13797. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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://www.cepr.org .

    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.