The Slow Growth of New Plants: Learning about Demand?

Lucia Foster, John Haltiwanger and Chad Syverson

Economica, 2016, vol. 83, issue 329, 91-129

Abstract: type="main" xml:id="ecca12172-abs-0001">

It is well known that new businesses are typically much smaller than their established industry competitors, and that this size gap closes slowly. We show that even in commodity-like product markets, these patterns do not reflect productivity gaps, but rather show differences in demand-side fundamentals. We document and explore patterns in plants’ idiosyncratic demand levels by estimating a dynamic model of plant expansion in the presence of a demand accumulation process (e.g. building a customer base). We find that active accumulation driven by plants’ past production decisions quantitatively dominates passive demand accumulation, and that within-firm spillovers affect demand levels but not growth.

Date: 2016
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Related works:
Working Paper: The Slow Growth of New Plants: Learning about Demand? (2012)
Working Paper: The Slow Growth of New Plants: Learning about Demand? (2012)
Working Paper: The Slow Growth of New Plants: Learning about Demand? (2010)
Working Paper: The Slow Growth of New Plants: Learning about Demand? (2010)
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