Is Productivity Advantage of Cities Really Down To Shift, Dilation, and Truncation?
城市生产率优势能否由平移、伸缩与截断解释?
Firms in denser areas are more productive, owing to agglomeration and selection. To disentangle these channels, Combes et al. (2012, ECTA) assume that total factor productivity (TFP) distributions in denser and less dense areas are identical up to shift, dilation, and truncation. Using Spanish firm-level data and methods robust to noisy TFP estimates, we find that TFP distributions are indeed statistically identical up to these parameters, validating such decompositions.…