IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedlwp/98702.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Scalable versus Productive Technologies

Author

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
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://s3.amazonaws.com/real.stlouisfed.org/wp/2024/2024-019.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.20955/wp.2024.019?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nezih Guner & Gustavo Ventura & Xu Yi, 2008. "Macroeconomic Implications of Size-Dependent Policies," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 11(4), pages 721-744, October.
    2. Chang-Tai Hsieh & Peter J. Klenow, 2009. "Misallocation and Manufacturing TFP in China and India," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(4), pages 1403-1448.
    3. Joel M. David & Venky Venkateswaran, 2019. "The Sources of Capital Misallocation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(7), pages 2531-2567, July.
    4. Ariel Burstein & Andrew Atkeson, 2005. "Trade Costs, Pricing to Market, and International Relative Prices," 2005 Meeting Papers 201, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    5. Daniel A. Ackerberg & Kevin Caves & Garth Frazer, 2015. "Identification Properties of Recent Production Function Estimators," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 83, pages 2411-2451, November.
    6. Jan De Loecker & Jan Eeckhout & Gabriel Unger, 2020. "The Rise of Market Power and the Macroeconomic Implications [“Econometric Tools for Analyzing Market Outcomes”]," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 135(2), pages 561-644.
    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. Marcela Eslava & John Haltiwanger & Nicolas Urdaneta, 2024. "The Size and Life-Cycle Growth of Plants: The Role of Productivity, Demand, and Wedges," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 91(1), pages 259-300.
    2. Alpysbayeva, Dinara & Vanormelingen, Stijn, 2022. "Labor market rigidities and misallocation: Evidence from a natural experiment," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    3. Simone Lenzu & Francesco Manaresi, 2019. "Sources and implications of resource misallocation: new evidence from firm-level marginal products and user costs," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 485, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    4. Chen, Guowen & Herrera, Ana María & Lugauer, Steven, 2022. "Policy and misallocation: Evidence from Chinese firm-level data," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    5. Kuosmanen, Natalia & Valmari, Nelli, 2023. "Renewal of Companies Through Product Switching," ETLA Working Papers 104, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy.
    6. Joel M. David & Venky Venkateswaran, 2019. "The Sources of Capital Misallocation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(7), pages 2531-2567, July.
    7. David Van Dijcke, 2022. "On the Non-Identification of Revenue Production Functions," Papers 2212.04620, arXiv.org, revised May 2024.
    8. Maurice J.G. Bun & Jasper Winter, 2022. "Capital and labor misallocation in the Netherlands," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 57(1), pages 93-113, February.
    9. Viral V. Acharya & Matteo Crosignani & Tim Eisert & Christian Eufinger, 2024. "Zombie Credit and (Dis‐)Inflation: Evidence from Europe," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 79(3), pages 1883-1929, June.
    10. Bento, Pedro & Restuccia, Diego, 2021. "On average establishment size across sectors and countries," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 220-242.
    11. Alzate, David & Carranza, Eliana & Duran-Franch, Joana & Packard, Truman & Proffen, Celina, 2024. "How Regulations Impact the Labor Market: A Review of the Literatures on Product and Labor Market Regulations," IZA Discussion Papers 17536, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Philippe Aghion & Antonin Bergeaud & Timo Boppart & Peter J Klenow & Huiyu Li, 2023. "A Theory of Falling Growth and Rising Rents," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 90(6), pages 2675-2702.
    13. Daniel Berkowitz, 2020. "Declining Market Competition in China," Working Paper 6897, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh.
    14. Nezih Guner & Alessandro Ruggieri, 2021. "Misallocation and inequality," Discussion Papers 2021/01, University of Nottingham, Centre for Finance, Credit and Macroeconomics (CFCM).
    15. Kaku Attah Damoah & Giorgia Giovannetti & Marco Sanfilippo, 2021. "Markup Dispersion and Firm Entry: Evidence from Ethiopia," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 83(2), pages 299-327, April.
    16. Dan Ben-Moshe & David Genesove, 2025. "Identifying the Frontier Structural Function and Bounding Mean Deviations," Papers 2504.19832, arXiv.org, revised May 2025.
    17. Sampi Bravo,James Robert Ezequiel & Jooste,Charl & Vostroknutova,Ekaterina, 2021. "Identification Properties for Estimating the Impact of Regulation on Markups and Productivity," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9523, The World Bank.
    18. Eero Mäkynen & Oskari Vähämaa, 2021. "Uncertainty, Misallocation and the Life-cycle Growth of Firms," Discussion Papers 146, Aboa Centre for Economics.
    19. Berkowitz, Daniel & Nishioka, Shuichiro, 2024. "The growth of firms, markets and rents: Evidence from China," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 383-399.
    20. Isaac Baley & Andrés Blanco, 2021. "Aggregate Dynamics in Lumpy Economies," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 89(3), pages 1235-1264, May.

    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

    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:fip:fedlwp:98702. 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: Scott St. Louis (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbslus.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.