There is wide variation in the sizes of manufacturing plants, even within the most narrowly defined industry classifications used by statistical agencies. Standard theories attribute all such size differences to productivity differences. This paper develops an alternative theory in which...

Does national market size matter for industrial structure? Round One (Krugman) answered in the affirmative: Home market effects matter. Round Two (Davis) refuted this, arguing that an assumption of convenience - transport costs only for the differentiated goods - conveniently obtained the...

The fact that large manufacturing plants export relatively more than small plants has been at the foundation of much work in the international trade literature. We examine this fact using Census micro data on plant shipments from the Commodity Flow Survey. We show the fact is not entirely an...