This Brief studies the establishment size distribution in the European Union countries. A well-established literature has established that an abundance of small establishments among lower-income countries is evidence of the misallocation of inputs. To investigate this phenomenon, this Brief...

Poorer countries (and poorer states within India) have a larger share of manufacturing employment in small plants. This paper presents empirical evidence and a theoretical model to show that this relationship is driven by greater demand for lower quality goods in poorer regions, which can be...

Custom software is distinct from other types of capital in that it is non-rival—once a firm makes an investment in custom software, it can be used simultaneously across its many establishments. Using confidential US Census data, we document that while firms with more establishments are more...

Why do export sales increasingly concentrate among a few "superstars"? This paper is the first to argue that the expansion of the Internet matters for this phenomenon. Using firm-level customs transaction data from 11 developing countries, we show that the spread of the internet steepens the...

Using a new panel dataset of about 140 thousand Portuguese firms during 2006-2019, we measure the effects of globalization on firm-level performance along four dimensions: ownership of capital, employment of foreign-seasoned managers, and participation in export and import markets. Once at least...

The size distribution of firms is an important indicator of market concentration. Studying the distribution of sales for eBay’s commercial sellers, this paper provides the first analysis of a firm size distribution (FSD) at an online market, further examining its evolution, and the underlying...