The Sources of Capital Misallocation

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: David, Joel M.; Venkateswaran, Venky
• 署名单位: University of Southern California; Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - Minneapolis; New York University
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0002-8282
• DOI: 10.1257/aer.20180336
• 发表日期: 2019
• 页码: 2531-2567
• 关键词: productivity; allocation; finance; plant; CHINA; size

摘要

We develop a methodology to disentangle sources of capital mis-allocation, i.e., dispersion in value-added/capital. It measures the contributions of technological! informational frictions and a rich class of firm-specific factors. An application to Chinese manufacturing firms reveals that adjustment costs and uncertainty, while significant, explain only a modest fraction of the dispersion, which stems largely from other factors: a component correlated with productivity and a fixed effect. Adjustment costs are more salient for large US firms, though other factors still account for the bulk of the dispersion. Technological/markup heterogeneity explains a limited fraction in China, but a potentially large share in the United States.