The Size and Life-Cycle Growth of Plants: The Role of Productivity, Demand, and Wedges
通过联合估计需求和生产函数，利用企业产出和投入的价格与数量信息，发现质量/产品吸引力是规模差异的主要来源，技术效率起辅助作用，而投入价格、加成率和残余楔子等因素抑制了规模分散，但导致较大的总体配置效率损失。
Abstract What determines the distribution of establishments in terms of size and life-cycle growth? How are those determinants related to aggregate productivity? We provide novel answers by developing a framework that uses price and quantity information on establishments’ outputs and inputs to jointly estimate the demand and production parameters, and subsequently, establishments’ quality-adjusted productivity, deriving both micro-level and aggregate implications. We find that the dominant source of variation in establishment size is variation in quality/product appeal but that variation in technical efficiency plays an important supporting role. Multiple factors dampen dispersion in establishment size including dispersion in input (quality-adjusted) prices, markups, and residual wedges. Relatively moderate dampening factors induce large aggregate allocative efficiency losses relative to their absence. We show that joint estimation of the parameters of the demand and production function crucially affects inferences on the determinants of the size distribution of firms and their implications for aggregate productivity.