Why do firm growth and exit rates decline with size? What determines the size distribution of firms and plants? This paper addresses these questions in a dynamic model of firm size with entry and exit that emphasizes the accumulation of specific factors in response to industry specific...

Most economic activity occurs in cities. This creates a tension between local increasing returns, implied by the existence of cities, and aggregate constant returns, implied by balanced growth. To address this tension, we develop a theory of economic growth in an urban environment. We show that...

Why do firm growth and exit rates decline with size? What determines the size distribution of firms? This paper presents a theory of firm dynamics that simultaneously rationalizes the basic facts on firm growth, exit, and size distributions. The theory emphasizes the accumulation of industry...

Intro -- Contents -- Foreword -- 1 Introduction -- 2 An Overview -- 3 Mathematical Preliminaries -- 4 Dynamic Programming under Certainty -- 5 Applications of Dynamic Programming under Certainty -- 6 Deterministic Dynamics -- 7 Measure Theory and Integration -- 8 Markov Processes -- 9 Stochastic...