This article develops a theory of how capital, skilled labor, and unskilled labor interact at the plant level. The theory has implications for the relationship between factor allocation and plant size and the effects of trade and growth on the skill premium. The theory is consistent with certain...

Theory suggests that vertical disintegration should be greater in areas where industries localize. This paper provides some evidence that this implication is true for the U.S. manufacturing sector. Purchased inputs as a percent of the value of output is used as a measure of vertical...

Historically, competition, or the extension of markets, has repeatedly brought tremendous increases in wealth. However, there is still plenty of uncertainty among economists as to why that is so. This article develops a model in which competition, modeled as the movement of goods between two...

This article asks whether or not the overall welfare of U.S. residents would be greater if U.S. federal law prohibited state governments from offering tax breaks to particular businesses. The answer of a formal model is yes, making such tax breaks illegal could increase a summary measure of...

This paper provides new evidence that state policies play a role in the location of industry. The paper classifies a state as pro-business or anti-business depending upon whether or not the state has a right-to-work law. The paper finds that, on average, there is a large abrupt increase in...

Recent literature suggests that historical accidents can trap economies in inefficient equilibria. In a prototype model in the literature, there are two locations, the productive South and the unproductive North. By accident of history, the industry starts in the North. Because of agglomeration...

There is an old wisdom that reductions in tariffs force changes on producers that lead to costless, or nearly so, increases in productivity. We construct a technology-ladder model that captures this wisdom. As in other technology-ladder models, time spent in research helps propel an industry up...

We argue that the rationalization gains often predicted by static applied general equilibrium models with imperfect competition and scale economies are artificially boosted by an unrealistic treatment of fixed costs. We introduce sunk costs into one such model calibrated with real-world data. We...

What is the force of attraction of cities? Leading explanations include the advantages of a concentrated market and knowledge spillovers. This paper develops a model of firm location decisions in which it is possible to distinguish the importance of the concentrated-market motive from other...