Skip to main content

The Scale of Production in Technological Revolutions

Staff Report 269 | Published April 1, 2000

Download PDF

Author

The Scale of Production in Technological Revolutions

Abstract

Many manufacturing industries, including the computer industry, have seen large increases in productivity growth rates and have experienced a reduction in average establishment size and a decrease in the variance of the sizes of plants. A vintage capital model is introduced where learning increases productivity on any given technology and firms choose when to adopt a new vintage. In the model, a rise in the rate of technological change leads to a decrease in both the mean and variance of the size distribution.