IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_10485.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Misallocation in Firm Production: A Nonparametric Analysis Using Procurement Lotteries

Author

Listed:
  • Paul Carrillo
  • Dave Donaldson
  • Dina Pomeranz
  • Monica Singhal

Abstract

How costly is the misallocation of production that we might expect to result from distortions such as market power, incomplete contracts, taxes, regulations, or corruption? This paper develops new tools for the study of misallocation that place minimal assumptions on firms’ underlying technologies and behavior. We show how features of the distribution of marginal products can be identified from exogenous variation in firms’ input use, and how these features can be used both to test for misallocation and to quantify the welfare losses that it causes. We then consider an application in which thousands of firms experience demand shocks derived from a lottery-based assignment of public procurement contracts for construction services in Ecuador. Using administrative tax data about these firms, we reject the null of efficiency but estimate that the welfare losses resulting from misallocation are only 1.6% relative to the first-best. Standard parametric assumptions applied to the same setting would suggest losses that are at least an order of magnitude larger.

Suggested Citation

  • Paul Carrillo & Dave Donaldson & Dina Pomeranz & Monica Singhal, 2023. "Misallocation in Firm Production: A Nonparametric Analysis Using Procurement Lotteries," CESifo Working Paper Series 10485, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10485
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp10485.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Tor Jakob Klette, 1999. "Market Power, Scale Economies and Productivity: Estimates from a Panel of Establishment Data," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(4), pages 451-476, December.
    2. Matias Busso & Sebastian Galiani, 2019. "The Causal Effect of Competition on Prices and Quality: Evidence from a Field Experiment," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(1), pages 33-56, January.
    3. Andreas Beerli & Jan Ruffner & Michael Siegenthaler & Giovanni Peri, 2021. "The Abolition of Immigration Restrictions and the Performance of Firms and Workers: Evidence from Switzerland," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(3), pages 976-1012, March.
    4. Robert T. Jensen & Nolan H. Miller, 2018. "Market Integration, Demand and the Growth of Firms: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in India," Working Papers id:12824, eSocialSciences.
    5. David Benson & Matthew A. Masten & Alexander Torgovitsky, 2022. "ivcrc: An instrumental-variables estimator for the correlated random-coefficients model," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 22(3), pages 469-495, September.
    6. Matthew A. Masten & Alexander Torgovitsky, 2016. "Identification of Instrumental Variable Correlated Random Coefficients Models," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 98(5), pages 1001-1005, December.
    7. Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo, 2014. "Do Firms Want to Borrow More? Testing Credit Constraints Using a Directed Lending Program," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 81(2), pages 572-607.
    8. Robert T. Jensen & Nolan H. Miller, 2018. "Market Integration, Demand and the Growth of Firms: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in India," NBER Working Papers 24693, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Claudio Ferraz & Frederico Finan & Dimitri Szerman, 2015. "Procuring Firm Growth: The Effects of Government Purchases on Firm Dynamics," NBER Working Papers 21219, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Hans K Hvide & Tom G Meling & Tarun Ramadorai, 2023. "Do Temporary Demand Shocks Have Long-Term Effects for Startups?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 36(1), pages 317-350.
    11. Suresh de Mel & David McKenzie & Christopher Woodruff, 2009. "Returns to Capital in Microenterprises: Evidence from a Field Experiment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(1), pages 423-423.
    12. Chang-Tai Hsieh & Peter J. Klenow, 2009. "Misallocation and Manufacturing TFP in China and India," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(4), pages 1403-1448.
    13. Kirk Doran & Alexander Gelber & Adam Isen, 2022. "The Effects of High-Skilled Immigration Policy on Firms: Evidence from Visa Lotteries," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 130(10), pages 2501-2533.
    14. Peng Ding & Avi Feller & Luke Miratrix, 2016. "Randomization inference for treatment effect variation," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 78(3), pages 655-671, June.
    15. Diego Restuccia & Richard Rogerson, 2008. "Policy Distortions and Aggregate Productivity with Heterogeneous Plants," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 11(4), pages 707-720, October.
    16. John Haltiwanger & Robert Kulick & Chad Syverson, 2018. "Misallocation Measures: The Distortion That Ate the Residual," NBER Working Papers 24199, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Michela Giorcelli, 2019. "The Long-Term Effects of Management and Technology Transfers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(1), pages 121-152, January.
    18. Douglas Gollin & Christopher Udry, 2021. "Heterogeneity, Measurement Error, and Misallocation: Evidence from African Agriculture," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 129(1), pages 1-80.
    19. David Sraer & David Thesmar, 2023. "How to Use Natural Experiments to Estimate Misallocation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 113(4), pages 906-938, April.
    20. Natalie Bau & Adrien Matray, 2023. "Misallocation and Capital Market Integration: Evidence From India," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 91(1), pages 67-106, January.
    21. Martin Rotemberg, 2019. "Equilibrium Effects of Firm Subsidies," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(10), pages 3475-3513, October.
    22. Milenko Fadic, 2020. "Letting Luck Decide: Government Procurement and the Growth of Small Firms," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 56(7), pages 1263-1276, June.
    23. Hugo A. Hopenhayn, 2014. "Firms, Misallocation, and Aggregate Productivity: A Review," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 6(1), pages 735-770, August.
    24. Hall, Robert E, 1988. "The Relation between Price and Marginal Cost in U.S. Industry," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(5), pages 921-947, October.
    25. Lauren Falcao Bergquist & Michael Dinerstein, 2020. "Competition and Entry in Agricultural Markets: Experimental Evidence from Kenya," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(12), pages 3705-3747, December.
    26. Robert Jensen & Nolan H. Miller, 2018. "Market Integration, Demand, and the Growth of Firms: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in India," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(12), pages 3583-3625, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Brugués, Felipe & Brugués, Javier & Giambra, Samuele, 2024. "Political connections and misallocation of procurement contracts: Evidence from Ecuador," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    2. Carol C. Bertaut & Stephanie E. Curcuru & Ester Faia & Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, 2024. "The Global (Mis)Allocation of Capital," International Finance Discussion Papers 1399, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Vittorio Bassi & Raffaela Muoio & Tommaso Porzio & Ritwika Sen & Esau Tugume, 2022. "Achieving Scale Collectively," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 90(6), pages 2937-2978, November.
    2. Simone Lenzu & Francesco Manaresi, 2019. "Sources and implications of resource misallocation: new evidence from firm-level marginal products and user costs," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 485, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    3. van der Geest, Jesse, 2024. "Economic effects of tax avoidance and compliance," Other publications TiSEM aaca33bf-975d-4e21-9b5f-5, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    4. Tomohiro Machikita & Tetsuji Okazaki, 2019. "Transition to a Modern Regime and Change in Plant Lifecycles: A Natural Experiment from Meiji Japan," CIGS Working Paper Series 19-006E, The Canon Institute for Global Studies.
    5. Tomihiro Machikita & Tetsuji Okazaki, 2019. "Transition to a Modern Regime and Change in PlantLifecycles: A Natural Experiment from Meiji Japan," CIRJE F-Series CIRJE-F-1122, CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo.
    6. Natalie Bau & Adrien Matray, 2023. "Misallocation and Capital Market Integration: Evidence From India," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 91(1), pages 67-106, January.
    7. Lenzu, Simone & Manaresi, Francesco, 2018. "Do Marginal Products Differ from User Costs? Micro-Level Evidence from Italian Firms," Working Papers 276, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State.
    8. Hang, Jing & Zhan, Chaoqun, 2023. "Government procurement and resource misallocation: Evidence from China," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 216(C), pages 568-589.
    9. Brugués, Felipe & Brugués, Javier & Giambra, Samuele, 2024. "Political connections and misallocation of procurement contracts: Evidence from Ecuador," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    10. Bento, Pedro & Restuccia, Diego, 2021. "On average establishment size across sectors and countries," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 220-242.
    11. Jonas Hjort & Golvine de Rochambeau & Vinayak Iyer & Fei Ao, 2020. "Informational Barriers to Market Access: Experimental Evidence from Liberian Firms," NBER Working Papers 27662, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Douglas Gollin & Christopher Udry, 2021. "Heterogeneity, Measurement Error, and Misallocation: Evidence from African Agriculture," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 129(1), pages 1-80.
    13. Diego Restuccia & Richard Rogerson, 2017. "The Causes and Costs of Misallocation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(3), pages 151-174, Summer.
    14. Talamas Marcos, Miguel Ángel, 2023. "Surviving Competition: Neighborhood Shops vs. Convenience Chains," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 13018, Inter-American Development Bank.
    15. Besley, T. & Roland, I. & Van Reenen, J., 2019. "The Aggregate Consequences of Default Risk: Evidence from Firm-level Data," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 2061, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    16. Natalie Bau & Adrien Matray, 2020. "Misallocation and Capital Market Integration: Evidence from India," Working Papers 263, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Center for Economic Policy Studies..
    17. Sampi Bravo,James Robert Ezequiel & Jooste,Charl & Vostroknutova,Ekaterina, 2021. "Identification Properties for Estimating the Impact of Regulation on Markups and Productivity," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9523, The World Bank.
    18. Sampreet Singh Goraya, 2019. "How does Caste Affect Entrepreneurship? Birth vs Worth," Working Papers 1104, Barcelona School of Economics.
    19. Jing Cai & Adam Szeidl, 2018. "Interfirm Relationships and Business Performance," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 133(3), pages 1229-1282.
    20. David, Joel M. & Schmid, Lukas & Zeke, David, 2022. "Risk-adjusted capital allocation and misallocation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(3), pages 684-705.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    allocative efficiency; misallocation; aggregate productivity;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity
    • D61 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Allocative Efficiency; Cost-Benefit Analysis
    • H57 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Procurement
    • L10 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - General
    • O40 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10485. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.