Abstract: There is a growing body of literature analyzing empirically the evolution of productivity dispersion at the firm level and its determinants. This paper contributes to this literature by investigating the case of Japanese firms during the so-called “Lost Decade” (1992-2005), which...

How do new industries emerge? This paper aims to answer this question by analyzing the key actors in this process. We focus on the new industry of service robot. By using data of Japanese patent applications, we analyze the role of new firms and of collaborations. We find that the emergence of...