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Macroeconomic Implications of Size-Dependent Policies

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  • Guner, Nezih
  • Ventura, Gustavo
  • Xu, Daniel Yi

Abstract

Government policies that impose restrictions on the size of large establishments or firms, or promote small ones, are widespread across countries. In this paper, we develop a framework to systematically study policies of this class. We study a simple growth model with an endogenous size distribution of production units. We parameterize this model to account for the size distribution of establishments and for the (observed) large share of employment in large establishments. Then, we ask: quantitatively, how costly are policies that distort the size of production units? What is the impact of these policies on productivity measures, the equilibrium number of establishments and their size distribution? We find that these effects are potentially large: policies that reduce the average size of establishments by 20% lead to reductions in output and output per establishment up to 8.1% and 25.6% respectively, as well as large increases in the number of establishments (23.5%).

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  • Guner, Nezih & Ventura, Gustavo & Xu, Daniel Yi, 2007. "Macroeconomic Implications of Size-Dependent Policies," CEPR Discussion Papers 6138, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:6138
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Establishment size; Productivity differences; Size distortions;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E23 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Production
    • O40 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - General

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