European Firm Concentration and Aggregate Productivity
Tommaso Bighelli, Filippo di Mauro, Marc Melitz, Matthias Mertens
Abstract
This article derives a European Herfindahl-Hirschman concentration index from 15 micro-aggregated country datasets. In the last decade, European concentration rose due to a reallocation of economic activity towards large and concentrated industries. Over the same period, productivity gains from reallocation accounted for 50% of European productivity growth and markups stayed constant. Using country-industry variation, we show that changes in concentration are positively associated with changes in productivity and allocative efficiency. This holds across most sectors and countries and supports the notion that rising concentration in Europe reflects a more efficient market environment rather than weak competition and rising market power.
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European Firm Concentration and Aggregate Productivity
Tommaso Bighelli, Filippo di Mauro, Marc Melitz, Matthias Mertens
Abstract
This article derives a European Herfindahl-Hirschman concentration index from 15 micro-aggregated country datasets. In the last decade, European concentration rose due to a reallocation of economic activity towards large and concentrated industries. Over the same period, productivity gains from reallocation accounted for 50% of European productivity growth and markups stayed constant. Using country-industry variation, we show that changes in concentration are positively associated with changes in productivity and allocative efficiency. This holds across most sectors and countries and supports the notion that rising concentration in Europe reflects a more efficient market environment rather than weak competition and rising market power.
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Automation, Globalization and Vanishing Jobs: A Labor Market Sorting View
Ester Faia, Sébastien Laffitte, Maximilian Mayer, Gianmarco Ottaviano
IZA Discussion Paper,
No. 13267,
2020
Abstract
We show, theoretically and empirically, that the effects of technological change associated with automation and offshoring on the labor market can substantially deviate from standard neoclassical conclusions when search frictions hinder efficient assortative matching between firms with heterogeneous tasks and workers with heterogeneous skills. Our key hypothesis is that better matches enjoy a comparative advantage in exploiting automation and a comparative disadvantage in exploiting offshoring. It implies that automation (offshoring) may reduce (raise) employment by lengthening (shortening) unemployment duration due to higher (lower) match selectivity. We find empirical support for this implication in a dataset covering 92 occupations and 16 sectors in 13 European countries from 1995 to 2010.
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How to Talk Down Your Stock Performance
Andreas Barth, Sasan Mansouri, Fabian Wöbbeking, Severin Zörgiebel
SSRN Discussion Papers,
2020
Abstract
We process the natural language of verbal firm disclosures in order to study the use of context specific language or jargon and its impact on financial performance. We observe that, within the Q&A of earnings conference calls, managers use less jargon in responses to tougher questions, and after a quarter of bad economic success. Moreover, markets interpret the lack of precise information as a bad signal: we find lower cumulative abnormal returns and a higher implied volatility following earnings calls where managers use less jargon. These results support the argument that context specific language or jargon helps to efficiently and precisely transfer information.
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Labor Market Power and the Distorting Effects of International Trade
Matthias Mertens
International Journal of Industrial Organization,
January
2020
Abstract
This article examines how final product trade with China shapes and interacts with labor market imperfections that create market power in labor markets and prevent an efficient market outcome. I develop a framework for measuring such labor market power distortions in monetary terms and document large degrees of these distortions in Germany's manufacturing sector. Import competition only exerts labor market disciplining effects if firms, rather than employees, possess labor market power. Otherwise, increasing export demand and import competition both fortify existing distortions, which decreases labor market efficiency. This widens the gap between potential and realized output and thus diminishes classical gains from trade.
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Managerial Ability and Value Relevance of Earnings
Bill Francis, Iftekhar Hasan, Ibrahim Siraj, Qiang Wu
China Accounting and Finance Review,
No. 4,
2019
Abstract
We examine how management ability affects the extent to which capital markets rely on earnings to value equity. Using a measure of ability that captures a management team’s capacity for generating revenues with a given level of resources compared to other industry peers, we find a strong positive association between managerial ability and the value relevance of earnings. Additional tests show that our results are robust to controlling for earnings attributes and investment efficiency. We use propensity score matching and the 2SLS instrumental variable approach to deal with the issue of endogeneity. For further identification, we examine CEO turnover and find that newly hired CEOs with better managerial abilities than the replaced CEOs increase the value relevance of earnings. We identify weak corporate governance and product market power as the two important channels through which superior management practices play an important role in the corporate decision-making process that positively influence the value relevance of earnings. Overall, our findings suggest that better managers make accounting information significantly more relevant in the market valuation of equity.
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May the Force Be with You: Exit Barriers, Governance Shocks, and Profitability Sclerosis in Banking
Michael Koetter, Carola Müller, Felix Noth, Benedikt Fritz
Deutsche Bundesbank Discussion Paper,
No. 49,
2018
Abstract
We test whether limited market discipline imposes exit barriers and poor profitability in banking. We exploit an exogenous shock to the governance of government-owned banks: the unification of counties. County mergers lead to enforced government-owned bank mergers. We compare forced to voluntary bank exits and show that the former cause better bank profitability and efficiency at the expense of riskier financial profiles. Regarding real effects, firms exposed to forced bank mergers borrow more at lower cost, increase investment, and exhibit higher employment. Thus, reduced exit frictions in banking seem to unleash the economic potential of both banks and firms.
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Taken by Storm: Business Financing and Survival in the Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina
Emek Basker, Javier Miranda
Journal of Economic Geography,
No. 6,
2018
Abstract
We use Hurricane Katrina’s damage to the Mississippi coast in 2005 as a natural experiment to study business survival in the aftermath of a capital-destruction shock. We find very low survival rates for businesses that incurred physical damage, particularly for small firms and less-productive establishments. Conditional on survival, larger and more-productive businesses that rebuilt their operations hired more workers than their smaller and less-productive counterparts. Auxiliary evidence from the Survey of Business Owners suggests that the differential size effect is tied to the presence of financial constraints, pointing to a socially inefficient level of exits and to distortions of allocative efficiency in response to this negative shock. Over time, the size advantage disappeared and market mechanisms seem to prevail.
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