IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/dicedp/95.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Econometric analysis of productivity with measurement error: Empirical application to the US Railroad industry

Author

Listed:
  • Coublucq, Daniel

Abstract

This paper analyzes the productivity in the US rail industry for the period 1980 - 2006. I propose a value-added production framework to circumvent the problem of measurement error in one input. I find evidence showing that aggregate productivity gains can be attributed to returns to scale and the reshuffling of resources to more efficient firms. However, productivity slows down for the period 1995 - 2000 after important concentrations. I also look at the correlations between firm-level productivity and the operating environment. My results show that failing to control for the omitted price variable bias leads to an overestimation of productivity gains.

Suggested Citation

  • Coublucq, Daniel, 2013. "Econometric analysis of productivity with measurement error: Empirical application to the US Railroad industry," DICE Discussion Papers 95, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:dicedp:95
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/75216/1/749817186.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jan De Loecker, 2011. "Product Differentiation, Multiproduct Firms, and Estimating the Impact of Trade Liberalization on Productivity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 79(5), pages 1407-1451, September.
    2. Nina Pavcnik, 2002. "Trade Liberalization, Exit, and Productivity Improvements: Evidence from Chilean Plants," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 69(1), pages 245-276.
    3. Dubois, Pierre & Nauges, Céline, 2010. "Identifying the effect of unobserved quality and expert reviews in the pricing of experience goods: Empirical application on Bordeaux wine," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 205-212, May.
    4. Olley, G Steven & Pakes, Ariel, 1996. "The Dynamics of Productivity in the Telecommunications Equipment Industry," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 64(6), pages 1263-1297, November.
    5. Ann F. Friedlaender & Ernst R. Berndt & Gerard McCullough, 1992. "Governance Structure, Managerial Characteristics, and Firm Performance in the Deregulated Rail Industry," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 23(1992 Micr), pages 95-186.
    6. Ivaldi, Marc & McCullough, Gerard, 2005. "Welfare Trade-Offs in US Rail Mergers," CEPR Discussion Papers 5000, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    7. Klette, Tor Jakob & Griliches, Zvi, 1996. "The Inconsistency of Common Scale Estimators When Output Prices Are Unobserved and Endogenous," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 11(4), pages 343-361, July-Aug..
    8. Erik Brynjolfsson & Lorin M. Hitt, 2003. "Computing Productivity: Firm-Level Evidence," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(4), pages 793-808, November.
    9. Jeffrey M Wooldridge, 2010. "Econometric Analysis of Cross Section and Panel Data," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 2, volume 1, number 0262232588, December.
    10. Ellig, Jerry, 2002. "Railroad Deregulation and Consumer Welfare," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 21(2), pages 143-167, March.
    11. Ivaldi Marc & Mccullough Gerard, 2008. "Subadditivity Tests for Network Separation with an Application to U.S. Railroads," Review of Network Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 7(1), pages 1-13, March.
    12. Coublucq Daniel & Ivaldi Marc & McCullough Gerard, 2018. "The Static-Dynamic Efficiency Trade-off in the US Rail Freight Industry: Assessment of an Open Access Policy," Review of Network Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 17(4), pages 267-301, December.
    13. Petia Topalova & Amit Khandelwal, 2011. "Trade Liberalization and Firm Productivity: The Case of India," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 93(3), pages 995-1009, August.
    14. Ackerberg, Daniel & Caves, Kevin & Frazer, Garth, 2006. "Structural identification of production functions," MPRA Paper 38349, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Wilson, Wesley W, 1997. "Cost Savings and Productivity in the Railroad Industry," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 11(1), pages 21-40, January.
    16. John Bitzan & Wesley Wilson, 2007. "Industry costs and consolidation: efficiency gains and mergers in the U.S. railroad industry," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 30(2), pages 81-105, March.
    17. Wilson, Wesley W, 1994. "Market-Specific Effects of Rail Deregulation," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(1), pages 1-22, March.
    18. Waters II, William G., 2007. "Evolution of Railroad Economics," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 11-67, January.
    19. Ulrich Doraszelski & Mark Satterthwaite, 2010. "Computable Markov‐perfect industry dynamics," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 41(2), pages 215-243, June.
    20. Ivaldi, M & McCullough, G J, 2001. "Density and Integration Effects on Class I U.S. Freight Railroads," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 19(2), pages 161-182, March.
    21. Richard Ericson & Ariel Pakes, 1995. "Markov-Perfect Industry Dynamics: A Framework for Empirical Work," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 62(1), pages 53-82.
    22. James Levinsohn & Amil Petrin, 2003. "Estimating Production Functions Using Inputs to Control for Unobservables," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 70(2), pages 317-341.
    23. Clifford Winston & Vikram Maheshri & Scott M. Dennis, 2011. "Long-Run Effects of Mergers: The Case of U.S. Western Railroads," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 54(2), pages 275-304.
    24. Ann F. Friedlaender, 1992. "Coal Rates and Revenue Adequacy in a Quasi-Regulated Rail Industry," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 23(3), pages 376-394, Autumn.
    25. Martland, Carl D., 2006. "Productivity, Pricing and Profitability in the U.S. Rail Freight Industry, 1995-2004," Journal of the Transportation Research Forum, Transportation Research Forum, vol. 45(3).
    26. Ann F. Friedlaender & Ernst R. Berndt & Judy Shaw-Er Wang Chiang & Mark Showalter & Christopher A. Vellturo, 1991. "Rail Costs and Capital Adjustments in a Quasi-Regulated Environment," NBER Working Papers 3841, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Roman Fossati & Heiko Rachinger, 2021. "Total Factor Productivity: Exploring firms’ dynamics and heterogeneity over the business cycle," Asociación Argentina de Economía Política: Working Papers 4471, Asociación Argentina de Economía Política.

    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. Coublucq, Daniel, 2013. "Demand estimation with selection bias: A dynamic game approach with an application to the US railroad industry," DICE Discussion Papers 94, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).
    2. Jan De Loecker & Pinelopi K. Goldberg & Amit K. Khandelwal & Nina Pavcnik, 2016. "Prices, Markups, and Trade Reform," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 84, pages 445-510, March.
    3. Florin Maican & Matilda Orth, 2017. "Productivity Dynamics and the Role of ‘Big-Box’ Entrants in Retailing," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 65(2), pages 397-438, June.
    4. Tomlin, Ben, 2014. "Exchange rate fluctuations, plant turnover and productivity," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 12-28.
    5. Coublucq Daniel & Ivaldi Marc & McCullough Gerard, 2018. "The Static-Dynamic Efficiency Trade-off in the US Rail Freight Industry: Assessment of an Open Access Policy," Review of Network Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 17(4), pages 267-301, December.
    6. Maican, Florin & Orth, Matilda, 2015. "A dynamic analysis of entry regulations and productivity in retail trade," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 67-80.
    7. Gregory Corcos & Massimo Del Gatto & Giordano Mion & Gianmarco I.P. Ottaviano, 2012. "Productivity and Firm Selection: Quantifying the ‘New’ Gains from Trade," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 122(561), pages 754-798, June.
    8. Amoroso, S., 2013. "Heterogeneity of innovative, collaborative, and productive firm-level processes," Other publications TiSEM f5784a49-7053-401d-855d-1, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    9. Massimo Del Gatto & Adriana Di Liberto & Carmelo Petraglia, 2011. "Measuring Productivity," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(5), pages 952-1008, December.
    10. Shepotylo, Oleksandr & Vakhitov, Volodymyr, 2012. "Services liberalization and productivity of manufacturing firms : evidence from Ukraine," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5944, The World Bank.
    11. Jan Bena & Peter Ondko & Evangelia Vourvachaki, 2011. "Productivity Gains from Services Liberalization in Europe," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp452, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    12. Daniel A. Ackerberg & Kevin Caves & Garth Frazer, 2015. "Identification Properties of Recent Production Function Estimators," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 83, pages 2411-2451, November.
    13. Oleksandr Shepotylo & Volodymyr Vakhitov, 2011. "Impact of services liberalization on productivity of manufacturing firms: evidence from Ukrainian firm-level data," Discussion Papers 45, Kyiv School of Economics.
    14. Carlos Daniel Santos, 2009. "Recovering the Sunk Costs of R&D: the Moulds Industry Case," CEP Discussion Papers dp0958, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    15. Hansen, Thorsten, 2010. "Tariff Rates, Offshoring and Productivity: Evidence from German and Austrian Firm-Level Data," Discussion Papers in Economics 11465, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    16. Alvaro Garcia-Marin & Nico Voigtländer, 2019. "Exporting and Plant-Level Efficiency Gains: It's in the Measure," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 127(4), pages 1777-1825.
    17. Matthew Backus, 2019. "Why is Productivity Correlated with Competition?," NBER Working Papers 25748, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. López Noria Gabriela, 2021. "The Impact of Trade Liberalization on the Mexican Automobile Industry: Evidence from the First 20 Years of NAFTA," Working Papers 2021-10, Banco de México.
    19. Cathy Ge Bao & Maggie Xiaoyang Chen, 2018. "Foreign Rivals Are Coming to Town: Responding to the Threat of Foreign Multinational Entry," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(4), pages 120-157, October.
    20. Maican, Florin G., 2012. "From Boom to Bust and Back Again: A dynamic analysis of IT services," Working Papers in Economics 543, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    industry dynamics; measurement error; productivity; selection; simultaneity; railroad industry;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C24 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Truncated and Censored Models; Switching Regression Models; Threshold Regression Models
    • L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms
    • L50 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - General
    • L92 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Railroads and Other Surface Transportation
    • L98 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Government Policy

    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:zbw:dicedp:95. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/diduede.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.