European Firm Concentration and Aggregate Productivity
Tommaso Bighelli, Filippo di Mauro, Marc Melitz, Matthias Mertens
Journal of the European Economic Association,
No. 2,
2023
Abstract
This paper derives a European Herfindahl–Hirschman concentration index from 15 micro-aggregated country datasets. In the last decade, European concentration rose due to a reallocation of economic activity toward large and concentrated industries. Over the same period, productivity gains from an increasing allocative efficiency of the European market accounted for 50% of European productivity growth while markups stayed constant. Using country-industry variation, we show that changes in concentration are positively associated with changes in productivity and allocative efficiency. This holds across most sectors and countries and supports the notion that rising concentration in Europe reflects a more efficient market environment rather than weak competition and rising market power.
Read article
Department Profiles
Research Profiles of the IWH Departments All doctoral students are allocated to one...
See page
Jobs at IWH
Vacancies at IWH The Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH) – Member of the Leibniz Association was founded in 1992. IWH’s tasks are economic research and science-based...
See page
Department Profiles
Research Profiles of the IWH Departments All doctoral students are allocated to one...
See page
Productivity
Productivity: More with Less by Better Available resources are scarce. To sustain our...
See page
LRF Research Profile
Research Profile of the Department of Laws, Regulations and Factor Markets The ...
See page
IWH at 2020 ASSA Annual Meeting in San Diego
IWH at 2020 ASSA Annual Meeting in San Diego Next year’s 2020 ASSA Annual Meeting...
See page
CompNet Database
The CompNet Competitiveness Database The Competitiveness Research Network (CompNet)...
See page
Müller ref
Selected Publications ...
See page
IWH-CompNet Discussion Papers
IWH-CompNet Discussion Papers The IWH-CompNet Discussion Paper series presents research...
See page