Quantifying the Sources of Firm Heterogeneity
Quantifying the Sources of Firm Heterogeneity
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DOI：
10.2139/ssrn.2693688
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发表时间：
2014-08
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Colin J. Hottman;S. Redding;David E. Weinstein
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Colin J. Hottman;S. Redding;David E. Weinstein
我们开发并从结构上估计了一个异质多产品公司的模型，该模型可用于将公司规模分布分解为成本、吸引力(质量或品味)、加价和产品范围的贡献。使用尼尔森条形码的价格和销售额数据，我们发现，公司吸引力和产品范围的差异至少解释了公司销售额变化的五分之四。我们发现，企业内部产品的不完全替代性，以及大企业比小企业提供更多产品的事实，意味着标准生产率衡量标准高度依赖于隐含的需求系统假设，并可能严重低估最大企业的相对生产率。虽然大多数公司被持续加价的垄断竞争基准很好地接近，但我们发现，占总销售额大部分的最大公司基本上偏离了这一基准，并表现出可变加价和实质性的蚕食效应。
We develop and structurally estimate a model of heterogeneous multiproduct firms that can be used to decompose the firm-size distribution into the contributions of costs, “appeal” (quality or taste), markups, and product scope. Using Nielsen bar-code data on prices and sales, we find that variation in firm appeal and product scope explains at least four fifths of the variation in firm sales. We show that the imperfect substitutability of products within firms, and the fact that larger firms supply more products than smaller firms, implies that standard productivity measures are highly dependent on implicit demand system assumptions and probably dramatically understate the relative productivity of the largest firms. Although most firms are well approximated by the monopolistic competition benchmark of constant markups, we find that the largest firms that account for most of aggregate sales depart substantially from this benchmark, and exhibit both variable markups and substantial cannibalization effects.