On Average Establishment Size across Sectors and Countries

Pedro Bento and Diego Restuccia

Working Papers from University of Toronto, Department of Economics

Abstract: We construct a new dataset for the average employment size of establishments across sectors and countries from hundreds of sources. Establishments are larger in manufacturing than in services, and in each sector they are larger in richer countries. The cross-country income elasticity of establishment size is remarkably similar across sectors, about 0.3. We discuss these facts in light of several prominent theories of development such as entry costs and misallocation. We then quantify the sectoral and aggregate impact of entry costs and misallocation in an otherwise standard two-sector model of structural transformation with endogenous firm entry and firm-level productivity. We find that observed measures of misallocation account for the entire range of establishment-size differences across sectors and countries and almost 50 percent of the difference in non-agricultural GDP per capita between rich and poor countries.

Keywords: establishment size; manufacturing; services; distortions; misallocation; productivity. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E02 E1 O1 O4 O5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: Unknown pages
Date: 2018-08-18
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff, nep-ent, nep-mac and nep-tid
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Related works:
Journal Article: On average establishment size across sectors and countries (2021)
Working Paper: On Average Establishment Size across Sectors and Countries (2019)
Working Paper: On Average Establishment Size across Sectors and Countriesy (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tor:tecipa:tecipa-612

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