We develop a model with a finite number of multi-product firms that populate an industry together with a continuum of single product firms, and study the dynamics of this industry that arises from investments in the invention of new products. Consistent with the available evidence, the model...

In this paper I use data from a survey of firms to estimate the effects of a firm's wage level on several measures of its hiring costs and the characteristics and performance of its employees. These measures include the previous experience and current tenure of its employees; subjective...

We propose a new measure of allocative efficiency based on unrealized increases in aggregate productivity growth. We show that the difference in the value of the marginal product of an input and its marginal cost at any plant - the plant-input "gap" - is exactly equal to the change in aggregate...

Moving labor from agriculture to manufacturing - "industrialization" - is often viewed as essential for the development of poor countries. We present new evidence on the channels through which industrialization can help poor countries close the productivity gap with rich countries. To achieve...

Manufacturing has made an important contribution to raising living standards in many parts of the world. Concerns about premature deindustrialization have made some observers skeptical about the potential for manufacturing to play this role in Africa. But employment in African manufacturing has...

The paper analyzes the production structure and the demand for inputs in three major industrialized countries, the U.S., Japan and Germany. A dynamic factor demand model with two variable inputs (labor and energy)and two quasi-fixed inputs (capital and R&D) is derived directly from an...

This paper examines the relationship between inflation, exchange rates, and the pattern of international trade and payments in a small economy with utility-maximizing agents and a transactions demand for money. Fully anticipated inflation has real effects in the model through its role as a tax...

During the nineteenth century, the US manufacturing sector shifted away from the "hand labor" mode of production, characteristic of artisan shops, to the "machine labor" of the factory. This was the focus of an extremely detailed but extraordinarily complex study by the Commissioner of Labor...

Recent growth accelerations in Africa are characterized by increasing productivity in agriculture, a declining share of the labor force employed in agriculture and declining productivity in modern sectors such as manufacturing. To shed light on this puzzle, we disaggregate firms in the...