The Determinants of Plant Survival in the US Radio Equipment Industry During the Great Depression

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: University of Reading; University of Iowa
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0507
• DOI: 10.1017/S0022050715001503
• 发表日期: 2015
• 页码: 1097-1127
• 关键词: productivity; economies

摘要

Automobile manufacture is generally regarded as the paradigmatic mass production industry, with large plants able to exploit scale economies. We argue that the radio industry also sheds important light on evolving production technology and determinants of competitive success in inter-war manufacturing. Timothy F. Bresnahan and Daniel M.G. Raff (1991) showed that productivity differences resulting from scale in the auto industry translated into differences in exit rates during the Depression. We find that technical scale economies did not play a large role in the radio industry. Instead selection during the Depression was on non-technical productivity factors, including whether or not a plant's parent company owned a brand.