ETD

• productivity misallocation

The present work is centered on the economic idea of an optimal allocation of resources across productive plants. In the recent years, the academic debate paved the way for and explored new methods to empirically analyse this topic, starting from the seminal contribution by Hsieh and Klenow (2009). After a short literature review, mainly focused on the criticisms of such framework, we introduce the covariance between firms’ productivity and size as an alternative measure for allocative efficiency. Our main reference here is the work by Bartelsman, Haltiwanger, and Scarpetta (2013). Then, we present our own estimation of such covariance within manufacturing sector in France, Italy and Spain. The empirical exercise has been carried out through firm-level data at four-digit sectors. Finally, a robustness check with detailed French customs data is presented.