Unraveling firms: demand, productivity and markups heterogeneity
File(s)MS_20210871_accepted.pdf (2.87 MB)
Accepted version
Author(s)
Forlani, Emanuele
Martin, Ralf
Mion, Giordano
Muuls, Mirabelle
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
We develop a novel framework that simultaneously allows recovering heterogeneity in demand, quantity TFP and markups across firms while leaving the correlation between the three dimensions unrestricted. We accomplish this by explicitly introducing demand heterogeneity and systematically exploiting assumptions used in previous productivity estimation approaches. In doing so, we provide an exact decomposition of revenue productivity in terms of the underlying heterogeneities, thus bridging the gap between quantity and revenue productivity estimations. We use Belgian firms production data to quantify TFP, demand and markups and show how they are correlated with each other, across time and with measures obtained from other approaches. In doing so, we find quantity TFP and demand to be strongly negatively correlated with each other so suggesting a trade-off between the quality of a firm’s products and their production cost. We also show how our framework provides deeper and sharper insights on the response of firms to increasing import competition from China. In particular, we find that changes in revenue productivity materialise as the outcome of complex, and sometimes offsetting, changes in quantity TFP, demand, markups and production scale.
Date Issued
2023-08-01
Date Acceptance
2023-04-12
Citation
The Economic Journal, 2023, 133 (654), pp.2251-2302
ISSN
0013-0133
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Start Page
2251
End Page
2302
Journal / Book Title
The Economic Journal
Volume
133
Issue
654
Copyright Statement
© 2023 Royal Economic Society. Published by Oxford University Press. This is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in The Economic Journal following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1093/ej/uead031
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2023-04-17