Structural Change Within versus Across Firms: Evidence from the United States / Xiang Ding, Teresa C. Fort, Stephen J. Redding, Peter K. Schott.

By:

Ding, Xiang

Contributor(s):

Material type: Text

TextSeries: Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) ; no. w30127.Publication details: Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2022.Description: 1 online resource: illustrations (black and white)Subject(s):

Production • Cost • Capital • Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity • Capacity
Production • Cost • Capital • Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity • Capacity
Empirical Studies of Trade
Empirical Studies of Trade
Industrial Organization and Macroeconomics: Industrial Structure and Structural Change • Industrial Price Indices
Industrial Organization and Macroeconomics: Industrial Structure and Structural Change • Industrial Price Indices
Empirical Studies of Economic Growth • Aggregate Productivity • Cross-Country Output Convergence
Empirical Studies of Economic Growth • Aggregate Productivity • Cross-Country Output Convergence

Other classification:

Online resources:

Available additional physical forms:

Hardcopy version available to institutional subscribers

Abstract: We document the role of intangible capital in manufacturing firms' substantial contribution to non-manufacturing employment growth from 1977-2019. Exploiting data on firms' "auxiliary" establishments, we develop a novel measure of proprietary in-house knowledge and show that it is associated with increased growth and industry switching. We rationalize this reallocation in a model where firms combine physical and knowledge inputs as complements, and where producing the latter in-house confers a sector-neutral productivity advantage facilitating within-firm structural transformation. Consistent with the model, manufacturing firms with auxiliary employment pivot towards services in response to a plausibly exogenous decline in their physical input prices.

Tags from this library: No tags from this library for this title. Log in to add tags.

Average rating: 0.0 (0 votes)

Holdings
Item type	Home library	Collection	Call number	Status	Date due	Barcode	Item holds
Working Paper	Biblioteca Digital	Colección NBER	nber w30127 (Browse shelf(Opens below))	Not for loan

Total holds: 0

Collection: Colección NBER Close shelf browser (Hides shelf browser)

Previous	No cover image available	No cover image available	No cover image available	No cover image available	No cover image available	No cover image available	No cover image available	Next
Previous	nber w30124 Nutrient Pollution and U.S. Agriculture: Causal Effects, Integrated Assessment, and Implications of Climate Change /	nber w30125 The Impact of Minority Representation at Mortgage Lenders /	nber w30126 Accelerating Vaccine Innovation for Emerging Infectious Diseases via Parallel Discovery /	nber w30127 Structural Change Within versus Across Firms: Evidence from the United States /	nber w30128 Risk Pooling and Precautionary Saving in Village Economies /	nber w30129 The Distributional Impacts of a VMT-Gas Tax Swap /	nber w3013 Multinational Corporations, Transfer Prices, and Taxes: Evidence from the U.S. Petroleum Industry /	Next

June 2022.

We document the role of intangible capital in manufacturing firms' substantial contribution to non-manufacturing employment growth from 1977-2019. Exploiting data on firms' "auxiliary" establishments, we develop a novel measure of proprietary in-house knowledge and show that it is associated with increased growth and industry switching. We rationalize this reallocation in a model where firms combine physical and knowledge inputs as complements, and where producing the latter in-house confers a sector-neutral productivity advantage facilitating within-firm structural transformation. Consistent with the model, manufacturing firms with auxiliary employment pivot towards services in response to a plausibly exogenous decline in their physical input prices.