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Resource Misallocation in European Firms: The Role of Constraints, Firm Characteristics and Managerial Decisions

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  • Svejnar, Jan
  • Revoltella, Debora
  • Gorodnichenko, Yuriy
  • Weiss, Christoph

Abstract

Using a new survey, we show that the dispersion of marginal products across firms in the European Union is about twice as large as that in the United States. Reducing it to the US level would increase EU GDP by more than 30 percent. Alternatively, removing barriers between industries and countries would raise EU GDP by at least 25 percent. Firm characteristics, such as demographics, quality of inputs, utilization of resources, and dynamic adjustment of inputs, are predictors of the marginal products of capital and labor. We emphasize that some firm characteristics may reflect compensating differentials rather than constraints and the effect of constraints on the dispersion of marginal products may hence be smaller than has been assumed in the literature. We also show that cross-country differences in the dispersion of marginal products are more due to differences in how the business, institutional and policy environment translates firm characteristics into outcomes than to the differences in firm characteristics per se.

Suggested Citation

  • Svejnar, Jan & Revoltella, Debora & Gorodnichenko, Yuriy & Weiss, Christoph, 2018. "Resource Misallocation in European Firms: The Role of Constraints, Firm Characteristics and Managerial Decisions," CEPR Discussion Papers 12821, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:12821
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    Cited by:

    1. Shalini Mitra, 2018. "Persistent Misallocation and the Productivity Slowdown in EU," Working Papers 201812, University of Liverpool, Department of Economics.
    2. Tiziano Ropele & Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Olivier Coibion, 2024. "Inflation Expectations and Misallocation of Resources: Evidence from Italy," American Economic Review: Insights, American Economic Association, vol. 6(2), pages 246-261, June.
    3. Eric Gargan & Eoin Kenny & Cynthia O'Regan & Conor O'Toole, 2024. "A Cross Country Perspective on Irish Enterprise Investment: Do Fundamentals or Constraints Matter?," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 55(2), pages 173-215.
    4. Maurin, Laurent & Wolski, Marcin, 2021. "Aggregate productivity slowdown in Europe: New evidence from corporate balance sheets," EIB Working Papers 2021/04, European Investment Bank (EIB).
    5. Maurice J.G. Bun & Jasper Winter, 2022. "Capital and labor misallocation in the Netherlands," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 57(1), pages 93-113, February.
    6. Anyfantaki, Sofia & Caloghirou, Yannis & Dellis, Konstantinos & Karadimitropoulou, Aikaterini & Petroulakis, Filippos, 2024. "The need for an industrial policy for long-term growth," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 121983, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    7. Ranasinghe, Ashantha, 2024. "Misallocation across establishment gender," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(1), pages 183-206.
    8. Norbert Ernst & Nico Pintar & Richard Sellner, 2023. "Resource Misallocation and TFP Gap Development in Austria (Richard Sellner, Nico Pintar, Norbert Ernst)," Working Papers 246, Oesterreichische Nationalbank (Austrian Central Bank).
    9. Sofia Anyfantaki & Yannis Caloghirou & Konstantinos Dellis & Aikaterini Karadimitropoulou & Filippos Petroulakis, 2024. "The 2013 Cypriot Banking Crisis and Blame Attribution: survey evidence from the first application of a bail-in in the Eurozone," GreeSE – Hellenic Observatory Papers on Greece and Southeast Europe 193, Hellenic Observatory, LSE.
    10. Maurice Bun & Jasper de Winter, 2019. "Measuring trends and persistence in capital and labor misallocation," DNB Working Papers 639, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Marginal products; Resource allocation; Firm-specific factors; Economic growth;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • O47 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Empirical Studies of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence
    • O52 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Europe
    • D22 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis
    • D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity

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