Dispersion in Dispersion: Measuring Establishment-Level Differences in Productivity

Abstract

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Do Productivity Laggards Ever Catch Up With Leaders?†

“…It was also higher than in all the countries in the sample used by Berlingieri et al (2017), except for the services in Chile. The estimates for the U.S. are also lower: 1.9 in 1997-2010 reported by Cunningham et al (2018) and 1.4 in 1977 reported by Syverson (2004). The relatively high level of productivity dispersion may be associated with high regional segmentation in Russia (Gennaioli et al, 2014, see Figure 11).…”

Measuring Productivity Dispersion: A Parametric Approach Using the Lévy Alpha-Stable Distribution

“…Fourth, our results relate to the work of statistical agencies around the world, who are developing procedures to make publicly available summary statistics from micro data, and in particular industrylevel productivity dispersion (Cunningham et al 2018, Berlingieri, Blanchenay, Calligaris & Criscuolo 2017. A key contribution in this paper is to make a suggestion regarding what statistics should be released, namely 5 quantiles necessary to perform Mc Culloch's (1986) quantile estimation of the four Lévy alpha-stable parameters.…”

Opening the Black Box: Task and Skill Mix and Productivity Dispersion

“…It is well known that productivity varies across establishments, even within detailed industries. For example, Cunningham et al (2022) found that on average an establishment at the 90 th percentile of the total factor productivity (TFP) distribution is about 2.9 times as productive as an establishment at the 10 th percentile within four-digit NAICS manufacturing industries. In a survey article, Syverson (2011) discusses several possible sources of productivity dispersion, including difficult-to-measure factors such as differences in managerial talent and differences in the quality of labor and other inputs.…”

“…Ideally, measurement of establishment-level productivity would also account for the types of workers the establishment employs and the tasks they perform. Our ultimate goal is to address this limitation by integrating establishment-level 1 See Cunningham et al (2022) for a detailed description of the development of the datasets. DiSP is available at: https://www.bls.gov/productivity/articles-and-research/dispersion-statistics-on-productivity/ and https://www.census.gov/disp.…”

“…Our productivity dispersion statistics come from the DiSP data (described in detail in Cunningham, et al (2022)). We create four types of measures of tasks and/or skills using OEWS and Occupational Information Network (O*NET) data.…”