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From Productivity To Firm Growth, James Bessen, Erich Denk
From Productivity To Firm Growth, James Bessen, Erich Denk
Faculty Scholarship
It is widely held that more productive firms grow faster, thus reallocating resources and raising aggregate productivity. Yet little empirical research identifies the features of the mechanisms affecting this process. This paper develops and tests a general model encompassing several mechanisms used to overcome informational frictions to growth. We find that firm size, productivity dispersion, and large firm investments in intangibles are all significantly related to changes in firm growth in response to productivity. These factors can account for much of the decline in the response to productivity since 2000 (Decker et al. 2020). Also, industry concentration is directly related …
Firm Differences: Skill Sorting And Software, James Bessen, Chen Meng, Erich Denk
Firm Differences: Skill Sorting And Software, James Bessen, Chen Meng, Erich Denk
Faculty Scholarship
Recent research shows that much recent rise in wage inequality comes from growing differences between firms, especially sorting of skilled workers to high-paying firms. This paper explores the role of proprietary software in these changes. Using job ad data, we find that proprietary software is strongly associated with firm wage fixed effects and also with firm skills. Software accounts for half or more of skill sorting across firms. Moreover, both skill sorting and firm wage effects are greater for larger firms. The huge growth in proprietary software helps explain the growth in skill sorting that increases wage inequality.