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Market Concentration and Aggregate Productivity: The Role of Demand

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Abstract

This paper studies the relationship between market concentration and aggregate productivity when firm-level demand emerges from past marketing investments. Granular firms may invest in demand both to complement their productivity and to amplify market power—this second force can create persistent mismatch between customer capital and productivity. The importance of this mismatch depends on the relative persistence of productivity and demand. Empirically, we find that demand is more persistent than productivity, implying a sizable role for mismatch. This leads to sluggish demand-side adjustment in the face of productivity shocks in the quantified model. Policies targeting static markup distortions—such as production subsidies—can exacerbate excessive marketing and thus are subject to a tradeoff between static gains and dynamic losses.

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  • Jeremy Pearce & Liangjie Wu, 2025. "Market Concentration and Aggregate Productivity: The Role of Demand," Staff Reports 1159, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fednsr:101336
    DOI: 10.59576/sr.1159
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    3. 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.
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    Keywords

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    JEL classification:

    • O31 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives
    • O32 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Management of Technological Innovation and R&D
    • O34 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Intellectual Property and Intellectual Capital
    • O41 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - One, Two, and Multisector Growth Models
    • D22 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis
    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection

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