National Chains and Trends in Retail Productivity Dispersion

Dominic Smith, G. Jacob Blackwood, Michael D. Giandrea, Cheryl Grim, Jay Stewart and Zoltan Wolf

Working Papers from U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies

Abstract: Productivity dispersion within an industry is an important characteristic of the business environment, potentially reflecting factors such as market structure, production technologies, and reallocation frictions. The retail trade sector saw significant changes between 1987 and 2017, and dispersion statistics can help characterize how it evolved over this period. In this paper, we shed light on this transformation by developing public-use Dispersion Statistics on Productivity (DiSP) data for the retail sector for 1987 through 2017. We find that from 1987 through 2017, dispersion increased between retail stores at the bottom and middle of the productivity distribution. However, when we weight stores by employment dispersion, the middle of the distribution is lower initially and decreases over time. These patterns are consistent with a retail landscape featuring more and more activity taking place in chain stores with similar productivity. Firm-based dispersion measures exhibit a similar pattern. Further investigation reveals that there is substantial heterogeneity in dispersion levels across industries.

Keywords: retail; reallocation; business cycles; productivity dispersion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D24 E24 L81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cen:wpaper:25-64

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