Productivity, Place, and Plants

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Schoefer, Benjamin; Ziv, Oren
• 署名单位: University of California System; University of California Berkeley; Michigan State University
• 刊物名称: REVIEW OF ECONOMICS AND STATISTICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0034-6535
• DOI: 10.1162/rest_a_01275
• 发表日期: 2024-09
• 页码: 1167-1186
• 关键词: land rents; zipfs law; cities; agglomeration; GROWTH; IMPACT; TRADE

摘要

Why do cities differ so much in productivity? A long literature has sought out systematic sources, such as inherent productivity advantages, market access, agglomeration forces, or sorting. We document that up to three-quarters of the measured regional productivity dispersion is spurious, reflecting the luck of the draw of finite counts of idiosyncratically heterogeneous plants that happen to operate in a given location. The patterns are even more pronounced for new plants, hold for alternative productivity measures, and broadly extend to European countries. This large role for individual plants suggests a smaller role for places in driving regional differences.