The Industry and the Representative Firm: A Rejoinder

1955 ◽  
Vol 65 (260) ◽  
pp. 712
Author(s):  
J. N. Wolfe
Keyword(s):  
Representative Firm

Intra-Industry Heterogeneity and the Great Depression: The American Motor Vehicles Industry, 1929–1935

1991 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy F. Bresnahan ◽  
Daniel M. G. Raff
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Organization ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Motor Vehicles ◽  
Composition Effects ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Data Source ◽  
Representative Firm

Reliance on a “representative firm” approach in studying industrial behavior during the Great Depression obscures economically interesting patterns. A newly discovered data source lets us form and study an establishment-level panel dataset on the motor vehicles industry, one of the largest in 1929. Substantial intraindustry heterogeneity led to large composition effects in employment, output, and productivity: the large number of plants that shut down were unlike the continuing ones. Oddly, output does not seem to have shifted among continuing producers to the relatively low-cost ones. Reconciling these should illuminate links between industrial organization and macroeconomics.

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