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Essays in firm productivity: trade, geography and recession

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posted on 2023-06-09, 22:07 authored by Nicholas Jacob
This thesis answers three research questions in the ?eld of ?rm-level productivity, drawing on recent empirical frameworks that allow me to use detailed production datasets to simultaneously estimate ?rm heterogeneities in productivity, consumer demand and price-cost markups. Trade Reform Redux: Prices, Markups and Product Quality revisits the widely-studied Indian tari? liberalization that began in 1991 to show that rising product price-cost markups, documented in the recent literature are linked to quality upgrading responses to lower tari?s on imported intermediates. In On The Productivity Advantage of Cities, a co-authored paper, we shed new light on the nature of agglomeration externalities for which most theory focuses on di?erences in technical ability of ?rms across space, but for which most evidence relies on productivity measures that may be biased by di?erences in prices across space. We provide new evidence from France that shows little heterogeneity in the technical e?ciency -– the ability to turn a basket of inputs into physical outputs, or what we call quantity TFP -– displayed by ?rms in dense and less-dense areas, but some heterogeneity in the prices ?rms are able to charge, as well as a positive correlation between e?cient allocation of resources within regions and the density of regions. And in The UK’s Great Demand Recession, a co-authored paper, we estimate changes in revenue total factor productivity, i.e., TFP estimated using de?ated sales data; quantity TFP; consumer demand and other measures for UK ?rms before, during and after the Great Recession. Our results show weakness in quantity TFP and demand pushed down productivity in manufacturing and services. This thesis contributes to the existing literature in its use of these datasets and methods to provide new understanding of ?rms’ responses to a range of economic forces, with implications for both theory and policy in all three settings.

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  • Published version

Pages

140.0

Department affiliated with

  • Economics Theses

Qualification level

  • doctoral

Qualification name

  • phd

Language

  • eng

Institution

University of Sussex

Full text available

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2020-11-09

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