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Scalable versus Productive Technologies

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Abstract

CORRECT ORDER OF AUTHORS: Hubmer, Chan, Ozkan, Salgado, Hong. Are larger firms more productive, more scalable, or both? We use firm-level panel data from thirteen countries and employ a broad set of methods to estimate factor elasticities---capturing returns to scale (RTS)---and total factor productivity (TFP). We find substantial RTS heterogeneity within industries, with larger firms exhibiting higher RTS driven by greater intermediate input elasticities. TFP, by contrast, rises with firm size only up to the top decile before declining. Incorporating RTS heterogeneity into a standard model of entrepreneurship more than doubles the efficiency losses from financial frictions compared with a conventional calibration with only TFP differences.

Suggested Citation

  • Mons Chan & Guangbin Hong & Joachim Hubmer & Serdar Ozkan & Sergio Salgado, 2024. "Scalable versus Productive Technologies," Working Papers 2024-019, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, revised 06 May 2025.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedlwp:98702
    DOI: 10.20955/wp.2024.019
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    production function heterogeneity; returns to scale; firm-size distribution; misallocation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E22 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Investment; Capital; Intangible Capital; Capacity
    • E23 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Production
    • D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity
    • L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms

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