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4 août 2021
- 2108.02272
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Economics - General EconomicsSujets proches
Net income Pattern Model Economic theory Political economy Businesses Firms Companies Enterprises Business organizations Organizations, BusinessCiter ce document
Shuowen Chen et al., « R&D Heterogeneity and Countercyclical Productivity Dispersion », arXiv - économie
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Résumé
Why is the U.S. industry-level productivity dispersion countercyclical? Theoretically, we build a duopoly model in which heterogeneous R&D costs determine firms' optimal behaviors and the equilibrium technology gap after a negative profit shock. Quantitatively, we calibrate a parameterized model, simulate firms' post--shock responses and predict that productivity dispersion is due to the low-cost firm increasing R&D efforts and the high-cost firm doing the opposite. Empirically, we construct an index of negative profit shocks and provide two reduced-form tests for this mechanism.