Plants in Space
研究了企业如何决定工厂数量、规模和位置，平衡多工厂配送收益与设立管理成本及相互蚕食效应，利用离散几何分析极限情况，发现高生产率企业在高密度高租金地区设更多工厂，并用美国数据验证。
To decide the number, size, and location of its plants, a firm balances the benefit of delivering goods from multiple plants with the cost of setting up and managing these plants and the potential for cannibalization among them. Modeling the decisions of heterogeneous firms in an economy with a vast number of distinct locations involves a large combinatorial problem. Using insights from discrete geometry, we study a tractable limit case of this problem in which these forces operate at a local level. Our analysis delivers predictions on sorting across space. Compared with less productive firms, productive firms place more plants in dense, high-rent locations and fewer plants in markets with low density and low rents. We present evidence consistent with these and several other predictions, using US establishment-level data.