The Industrial Revolution in Services

Esteban Rossi-Hansberg and Chang-Tai Hsieh

No 13797, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: The rise in national industry concentration in the US between 1977 and 2013 is driven by a new industrial revolution in three broad non-traded sectors: services, retail, and wholesale. Sectors where national concentration is rising have increased their share of employment, and the expansion is entirely driven by the number of local markets served by firms. Firm employment per market has either increased slightly at the MSA level, or decreased substantially at the county or establishment levels. In industries with increasing concentration, the expansion into more markets is more pronounced for the top 10\% firms, but is present for the bottom 90\% as well. These trends have not been accompanied by economy-wide concentration. Top U.S. firms are increasingly specialized in sectors with rising industry concentration, but their aggregate employment share has remained roughly stable. We argue that these facts are consistent with the availability of a new set of fixed-cost technologies that enable adopters to produce at lower marginal costs in all markets. We present a simple model of firm size and market entry to describe the menu of new technologies and trace its implications.

JEL-codes: E23 E24 L16 L22 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-com, nep-his, nep-mac and nep-sbm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (39)

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Journal Article: The Industrial Revolution in Services (2023)
Working Paper: The Industrial Revolution in Services (2021)
Working Paper: The Industrial Revolution in Services (2019)
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