Products and Productivity

47 Pages Posted: 10 Aug 2005

See all articles by Andrew B. Bernard

Andrew B. Bernard

Dartmouth College - Tuck School of Business; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

Stephen J. Redding

Princeton University

Peter K. Schott

Yale University - School of Management; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); Yale University - Cowles Foundation

Multiple version iconThere are 3 versions of this paper

Date Written: July 2005

Abstract

Firms' decisions about which goods to produce are often made at a more disaggregate level than the data observed by empirical researchers. When products differ according to production technique or the way in which they enter demand, this data aggregation problem introduces a bias into standard measures of firm productivity. We develop a theoretical model of heterogeneous firms endogenously self-selecting into heterogeneous products. We characterize the bias introduced by unobserved variation in product mix across firms, and the implications of this bias for identifying firm and industry responses to exogenous policy shocks such as deregulation. More generally, we demonstrate that product switching gives rise to a richer set of industry-level dynamics than models where firm product mix remains fixed.

Keywords: Product choice, productivity, deregulation, industry evolution

JEL Classification: D21, L11, L60

Suggested Citation

Bernard, Andrew B. and Redding, Stephen J. and Schott, Peter K., Products and Productivity (July 2005). CEPR Discussion Paper No. 5126, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=781427

Andrew B. Bernard

Dartmouth College - Tuck School of Business ( email )

100 Tuck Hall
Hanover, NH 03755
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603-646-0302 (Phone)
603-646-9084 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/pages/faculty/Andrew.Bernard/

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

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Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) ( email )

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Stephen J. Redding (Contact Author)

Princeton University ( email )

Princeton, NJ 08544-1021
United States

HOME PAGE: http://www.princeton.edu/~reddings/

Peter K. Schott

Yale University - School of Management ( email )

135 Prospect Street
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New Haven, CT 06520-8200
United States
203-436-4260 (Phone)
203-436-6974 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://www.som.yale.edu/faculty/pks4

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

Yale University - Cowles Foundation

Box 208281
New Haven, CT 06520-8281
United States

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