Heterogeneous Firm Model Research Articles

Reducing the replication time for structural estimations: A successful replication of “An Anatomy of International Trade” using GPU computing

AbstractEaton, Kortum, and Kramarz (2011) (EKK) discovered empirical patterns from French manufacturing firms that a baseline firm heterogeneity model could not explain. The authors proposed and estimated a model that closely matches the patterns observed in French data. This paper successfully replicates their findings using author‐provided data, re‐implementing their algorithms in Python and leveraging graphics processing unit computing to significantly boost computational speed. Applying the model to Chinese manufacturing data, despite differences in context, showed that the model explains most observed patterns well.

Financial crises with different collateral types

Firms borrow against earnings more than they do against their assets. How does this affect the aggregate response to financial crises? I take a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model of heterogeneous firms that choose their capital and debt subject to a borrowing constraint and examine the recovery from a financial crisis when firms can use different types of collateral. I compare between two collateral types: assets, and earnings. I find that when firms borrow against earnings recessions are deeper, but recoveries are quicker compared to when firms borrow against assets. I also find that neither type of collateral can, by itself, completely explain the recovery from the Great Recession. Instead, the path of investment after the 2007-2008 Financial crisis is better captured by firms borrowing against earnings than by firms borrowing against assets, but this is reversed when looking at the path of output. This suggests that a combination of collateral types is required to fully capture the recovery from the Great Recession.

Why does international vertical specialisation affect within‐firm skill premium in China? Investigation and interpretation

AbstractWith highly disaggregated data during 2000–2006 in China, we construct the firm‐level international vertical specialisation index and find that China's ascension to WTO decreased the index in manufacturing firms. We investigate its relationship with measured skill premium in manufacturing firms and find that a one percentage point decrease in international vertical specialisation could lead to as much as a two‐tenth percentage point deduction in the skill premium. The effect is more pronounced when the specialisation is with OECD developed economies, while it is reversed with non‐OECD economies. Furthermore, the relationship is only significant in ordinary firms though processing firms also experienced changes in international vertical specialisation during the same period. Our results are robust to various empirical alternatives. We then propose a model that features a two‐stage production in Melitz's (2003, Econometrica, 71, 1695) heterogeneous firm model. The model can explain the puzzle why China's trade volume surged after entering WTO, while the degree of international vertical specialisation decreased. Furthermore, it also explains why vertical specialisation might affect within‐firm skill premium under trade liberalisation.

Reassessing the Relevance of Financial Shocks in an Estimated Heterogeneous Firm Model

Reassessing the Relevance of Financial Shocks in an Estimated Heterogeneous Firm Model

Misallocation, Productivity and Development with Endogenous Production Techniques

We study misallocation and sectoral productivity in a heterogeneous firms model with generalized production. Different from neo-classical models of production, our model endogenizes production-techniques and introduces firm-specific technique-distortions alongside factor- and scale-dependent distortions. Applying this micro-founded framework to firm-level data (US, China and India), we quantify that, for a broad range of manufacturing industry clusters, technique distortions generate more severe misallocation and sectoral TFP losses than capital and output distortions, accounting for about three quarters of the detrimental productivity effects. We thus uncover a quantitatively important channel for productivity growth and economic development resulting from within-firm organization of production.

Firms’ Precautionary Savings and Employment during a Credit Crisis

Can the macroeconomic effects of credit supply shocks be large even when a small share of firms is credit constrained? I use UK firm-level accounting data to discipline a heterogeneous-firm model where the interaction between real and financial frictions induces precautionary cash holdings. In the data, firms increased their cash ratios during the Great Recession, and cash-intensive firms displayed higher employment growth. A tightening of firms’ credit conditions generates the same dynamics in the model. Unconstrained firms preemptively respond to credit supply shocks; this precautionary channel, when appropriately quantified, crucially matters for the aggregate dynamics and firm-level patterns. (JEL D22, E24, E32, E44, G32)

Market concentration and the relative demand for college‐educated labour

AbstractIf large firms employ relatively more educated workers, will an increase in market concentration increase income inequality by raising the relative demand for skill? I use Swedish employer–employee data from 1997–2016 and find a strong correlation between firm size and the share of college‐educated (‘skilled’) workers. An increase in a sector's market concentration is correlated with a higher skilled wage premium and higher relative employment of skilled workers. This is due mainly to the reallocation of workers across firms. I demonstrate how these findings can be explained by a model of heterogeneous firms where productivity and skill intensity are positively correlated.

Reallocation and productivity in resource-rich economies

I study the firm-level dynamic response of a commodity-exporting economy to global cycles in commodity prices. I propose a heterogeneous-firms model endogenizing manufacturing productivity slowdowns through reallocation towards less productive firms. Within a given sector, commodity booms reallocate market share away from exporters because of exchange rate appreciation and away from capital-intensive firms because of the increase in the required rate of return to capital. Using microdata for Chile, the largest copper producer worldwide, I provide empirical evidence for these channels. When fed with the commodity super-cycle of 2004–2012, the calibrated model generates between 13% to 32% of the observed productivity slowdown.

A second-best argument for low optimal tariffs on intermediate inputs

We derive a new formula for the optimal uniform tariff in a small-country, heterogeneous-firm model with roundabout production and a nontraded good. Tariffs are applied on imported intermediate inputs. First-best policy requires that markups on domestic intermediate inputs are offset by subsidies. In a second-best setting where such subsidies are not used, roundabout production and the monopoly distortion in the traded sector create strong incentives to lower the optimal tariff on imported inputs. In a quantitative version of our two-sector small open economy, we find that the optimal tariff is lowered under nearly all parameter values considered, and can be negative.

Have Industrial Robots Improved Pollution Reduction? A Theoretical Approach and Empirical Analysis

AbstractTo investigate whether industrial robots have improved the ecological environment, this study integrated the adoption of robot technology and pollution abatement into Melitz's heterogeneous firm model. This showed that using robots in production can lower firms' pollution intensity by increasing their abatement investments, and this reduction effect is greater for higher polluting firms and those subject to weaker local environmental regulations. These theoretical expectations were then confirmed through a series of empirical investigations based on Bartik instrument regressions, with multiple robustness checks as well as heterogeneity and mechanism analyses. This paper adds to the literature on the relationships between automation technologies and green transformation. It shows that in the pursuit of economic growth and environmental protection, it is necessary for policymakers to shift from pollution control to technical support for traditional manufacturing firms.

Trade reform, oligopsony, and labor market distortion: Theory and evidence

In a heterogeneous-firm model with oligopsonistic local labor markets, this paper shows that opening up to trade can affect distortion in such markets. The distortion arises because firms are large and able to exercise market power over their local workers. Using a panel dataset of Chinese manufacturing firms from 1998 to 2007, I measure firm-level labor market distortion and examine their evolution following China's trade policy reform in 2001. I find that labor market distortion is pervasive and the trade policy reform has led to a net reduction of the distortion in China's manufacturing sector, with a larger and significant effect working through the liberalization of input tariffs.

Multi-product firms and misallocation

This paper studies how distortions alter firms’ product decisions. Using two firm-level datasets in China, we find (i) that multi-product (MP) firms are fewer and smaller in China than in the United States and (ii) that the MP probability of a firm is negatively associated with the level of distortion. We build discrete product choices into a heterogeneous firm model à la Melitz (2003) with entry and exit. Firms are subject to a size-dependent distortion that increases in firm-level productivities and product-level tastes. Calibrated to firm-level data moments in the United States and China, the model generates a welfare loss of 30% compared to the distortion-free economy. 24% of the overall loss is from the distorted product margin, while most of the rest is from the static misallocation as in Hsieh and Klenow (2009).

How Do Productivity Benefits Spill Over Across Firms? Explorations in a Heterogeneous Firm Applied General Equilibrium Trade Model

Considerable diffusion of technology occurs via global trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) while firm heterogeneities cause considerable production heterogeneities. Hi-tech products and investment goods of differentiated varieties from emerging and developed economies are vehicles of superior technology. Given this stylized evidence, we analyse factors facilitating (or inhibiting) technological spillover to domestic firms in the host nations in a counterfactual scenario of a Trans-Pacific-Partnership (TPP) deal. By using a mixture interface of global computable general equi-librium (CGE) models of FDI (GTAP-FDI) and firm heterogeneity model of Global Trade Analysis Project, GTAP Heterogeneous (GTAP-HET), we calibrate impacts of trade and FDI spillovers on: (i) global production, (ii) trade patterns, (iii) welfare and (iv) regional productivity gains. Importance of regional trade agreements and policy for productivity spillovers is highlighted.

Heavy tailed but not Zipf: Firm and establishment size in the United States

SummaryHeavy tails play an important role in modern macroeconomics and international economics. Previous work often assumes a Pareto distribution for firm size, typically with a shape parameter approaching Zipf's law. This convenient approximation has dramatic consequences for the importance of large firms in the economy. But we show that a lognormal distribution, or better yet, a convolution of a lognormal and a non‐Zipf Pareto distribution, provides a better description of the US economy, using confidential Census Bureau data. These findings hold even far in the upper tail and suggest that heterogeneous firm models should more systematically explore deviations from Zipf's law.

The State-Dependent Effectiveness of Hiring Subsidies

The responsiveness of job creation to shocks is procyclical, while the responsiveness of job destruction is countercyclical. This new finding can be explained by a heterogeneous-firm model in which hiring costs lead to lumpy employment adjustment. The model predicts that policies that aim to stimulate employment by encouraging job creation, such as hiring subsidies, are significantly less effective in recessions: these are times when few firms are near their hiring thresholds and many firms are near their firing thresholds. Policies that target the job destruction margin, such as employment protection subsidies, are particularly effective at such times. (JEL E24, E32, H25, J23, J64)

Firms’ entry choices across export products and markets, and the consequences of trade in an open economy: Evidence from China

We outline a model of endogenous choices of market entry and product scope in a partial-equilibrium model of heterogeneous firms with arbitrary productivity. Firms’ choices of interest depend on market characteristics including variable trade and fixed market-entry costs. Conditional on fixed costs, the extent to which firms respond to shocks depends on their (potentially nonparametric) density around the zero-profit threshold. Accordingly, identical changes in, e.g., variable trade costs per product and market can lead to vastly different responses across not only markets and products but also firms. We shed light on the heterogeneity of these responses by estimating parameters and otherwise calibrating the model to firm-and-product-level bilateral trade data for China.

Internetization and the markups of export firms: Evidence from China

Can internetization help Chinese exporting firms escape the “low markup trap”? We contend that it does, as internetization improves firms' capabilities and efficiencies in gathering and communicating information. We incorporate information costs and firm innovation choice into a heterogeneous firm model to test this hypothesis. The causality between firm-level internetization and markups is identified with a new instrumental variable designed to capture exogenous shocks to firm-level Internet exposure. After analyzing various internetization strategies, including social media, emails, and homepages, our results indicate that internetization directly increases the markups of Chinese exporting firms. In addition, with the enhanced information availability, internetization stimulates their innovation activities. Thus, we identify innovation as one channel, among others, through which internetization indirectly boosts the markups of China's export firms.

Manufacturing in a Natural Resource Based Economy: Evidence from Canadian Plants

This study investigates the effects of an oil boom on manufacturing plants performance. First, we derive several predictions using a model of heterogeneous firms. Second, we test these predictions on a plant level dataset using the Canadian Annual Survey of Manufacturers for 2000–2010. We exploit the time variation of the booming natural resource sector revenue in an oil-producing area in combination with the location of manufacturing plants to create an exogenous treatment variable. The outcome variables include plant level wages, employment, sales, and exports. We find that initial plant level productivity provides an important differentiation in average plants effects. Plants that are more productive become more likely to export in response to the oil boom, while less productive plants become less likely to export. Exporting firms become more likely to increase wages relative to non-exporting firms, but less likely to increase employment. While there is a great variety in the effect by sector, we do not observe that industry linkages with the resource industry drive plant performance.

An Empirical Analysis of US-Japan Trade Agreement on Welfare in ‘New’ and ‘New New’ Trade models of Monopolistic Competition and Firm Heterogeneity

The perfectly competitive Armington’s model underestimates the welfare effects of the US-Japan Trade Agreement, whereas the monopolistically competitive Krugman "New" trade model will have positive scale effects. As trade begins in firm heterogeneity Melitz "New New" trade model, only the most competitive firms can survive. Although the Melitz model has negative variety and fixed cost effects, the larger positive technology and scale effects offset the negative effects. Thus, the total welfare gains in the Melitz (2003) model owing to production technology and scale effects are much larger than those in the Armington (1969) and Krugman (1979) models. The total welfare gains in the Melitz (2003) model are also larger than those in the Armington (1969) model because of the scale effect of the US-Japan Trade Agreement. Thus, the welfare effects depend on the economic structure of the free-trade agreement members. However, we need to adopt the more realistic Melitz "New New" trade model and Krugman "New"trade model than the standard conventional Armington model to analyze the more plausible economic effects of the US- Japan Trade Agreement.

China’s Outward Foreign Direct Investment and Bilateral Trade Potential: A Theoretical and Empirical Study

As a large developing country, China’s outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) and its relationship to trade have always been subjects of extensive scrutiny in academic circles. With the continuous advancement of the “Belt and Road” initiative (BRI), the pace of overseas expansion by Chinese firms has accelerated. This paper theoretically constructs a firm heterogeneity model of China’s OFDI and bilateral trade, and conducts research based on panel data of China’s OFDI in countries along the BRI from 2003 to 2019. The results show that China’s OFDI can substantially enhance the potential for bilateral trade, and this conclusion remains robust after overcoming endogeneity and economic fluctuations. In a heterogeneity test, China’s OFDI in countries along the “Land Silk Road” is shown to have a greater effect on trade potential than in countries along the “Maritime Silk Road.” In the controlled test, China’s OFDI to BRI countries has a greater role in upgrading trade potential than investment in other trading powerhouses. China’s OFDI can promote the economic development of host countries along the BRI by strengthening the potential for bilateral trade. The results of this study are not only conducive to the “going global” of Chinese enterprises but also of practical significance for host countries to achieve high-quality economic development.