Competition Firm Turnover And Productivity Growth

This paper investigates the extent to which productivity growth is the result of firm turnover as output is shifted from one firm to another, driven by the competitive process. Turnover occurs as some firms gain market share and others lose it. Some of the resulting turnover is due to entry and exit. Another part arises from growth and decline in incumbent continuing firms. This paper proposes a method for measuring the impact of firm turnover on productivity growth and shows that this impact is far more important than many previous empirical studies have concluded. It argues that firm turnover associated with competition is the main source of aggregate labour productivity growth in Canadian manufacturing industries.

This paper examines firm turnover and productivity growth in the Canadian retail trade sector. Firm turnover occurs as the competitive process shifts market share from exiting firms and existing frims that contracted to entering firms and existing frims that expanded. There is considerably more firm turnover in the retail sector than in the manufacturing sector and more of it comes from entry and exit. Moreover, contrary to the manufacturing sector where only part of overall productivity growth comes from firm turnover and the re-allocation of resources from the less to the more productive growth comes from firm turnover and the re-allocation of resources from the less to the more productive, all of the aggregate productivity growth comes from this source in the retail sector.

This paper investigates the extent to which productivity growth is the result of turnover - the process that shifts output from one firm to another as a result of the competitive process. Turnover occurs because some firms gain market share and others lose it. Some turnover is due to entry and exit. The other part arises from growth and decline in incumbent continuing producers. The paper proposes a method for measuring the impact of plant turnover on productivity growth and outlines how this contribution has changed in Canada as a result of substantial trade liberalization in the 1990s.

This paper examines firm turnover and productivity growth in the Canadian retail trade sector.

The Dynamics of Industrial Competition describes the internal dynamics of industries using new and unique longitudinal data that make it possible to track firms over time. It provides a comprehensive picture of a number of aspects of firm turnover in North America that arise from the competitive process - the entry and the exit of firms, the growth and the decline of incumbent firms, and the merger process. Instantaneous and cumulative measures of market dynamics are provided. Since the forces contributing to competition are varied and industries are affected by heterogeneous forces, different aspects of firm turnover are considered in order to provide a comprehensive overview of the competitive process. Entry is divided into that portion coming from the creation of new plants and that portion arising from the acquisition of existing firms. Differences are drawn between the effects of related and unrelated acquisitions and between the effects of take-overs made by domestic and foreign firms. Differences between large- and small-firm activity are also investigated. The effects of turnover on productivity, efficiency, wage rates, and profitability are extensively model led. Using various measures of firm turnover to proxy the amount of competition, the study examines and contextualizes the relationship between industry performance and the intensity of the competitive process.

This paper presents empirical evidence on the impact of competition on firm productivity. Using firm-level observations from the World Bank Enterprise Survey database, we find a positive and robust causal relationship between our proxies for competition and our measures of productivity. We also find that countries that implemented product-market reforms had a more pronounced increase in competition, and correspondingly, in productivity: the contribution to productivity growth due to competition spurred by product-market reforms is around 12-15 percent.