Working Paper

The between firm effect with multiproduct firms

Abstract: This paper studies the multi-product firms with two factors of production: unskilled and skilled labor (talent). Creating new products is skill intensive while production is less skill intensive. By introducing these two tasks a firm operates which act as two seemingly sectors, we show here a new effect: an increase in the skilled labor supply, relatively to unskilled labor, could reduce the number of products but increase the average scale per product. The relative strength of this effect depends on the degree of firm heterogeneity and the extent to which we allow multiple product within the firm. Moreover, the survival cut-off can be higher (or lower) if the fixed costs (or the variable costs) are lower. Economic integration influences this survival cut-off-only through the ratio of skilled labor to unskilled labor, but not the market size. This policy is welfare enhancing but the gains might be non uniformly distributed across agents. The paper also sheds light on the pattern of trade with only one industry.

Keywords: Trade; Productivity; Labor economics;

Bibliographic Information

Provider: Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas

Part of Series: Globalization Institute Working Papers

Publication Date: 2012

Number: 122