Géraud Desazars: Growing through Capital

Seminars - PhD JM Practice Talk - Macroeconomics
(joint with PhD School)
Speakers
Géraud Desazars, Bocconi University
12:30pm - 1:45pm
Alberto Alesina Seminar Room 5.e4.sr04 - floor 5 - via Roentgen 1

Abstract: Large firms exhibit systematically higher capital-intensity than their competitors, a fact at odds with standard models where firms' technological differences are factor-neutral. This paper develops a general equilibrium framework in which firms expand by adapting their technology in order to integrate capital goods when they become cheaper. Firms can pay a firm-specific switching cost to change their production technology for a more capital-intensive one. As the cost of capital falls due to capital-embodied technical change, the firms that face the smallest switching costs become relatively more capital intensive and gain a competitive edge. This allows them to build market shares and markups. Markups endogeneity generates strategic complementarities which widens further the dispersion in capital intensity and market shares. The model provides a unified explanation for rising dispersion in markups, a falling aggregate labor share despite a rising median labor share, sluggish investment, and the divergence between sales and employment concentration. 

for information contact giulia.zenoni@unibocconi.it or angela.baldassarre@unibocconi.it