Econometrica: Nov, 2022, Volume 90, Issue 6

Achieving Scale Collectively

https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA18773
p. 2937-2978

Vittorio Bassi, Raffaela Muoio, Tommaso Porzio, Ritwika Sen, Esau Tugume

Many firms in developing countries could be too small to adopt modern technology embodied in expensive production machines. This paper shows that rental market interactions allow these small firms to increase their effective scale and mechanize production. We conduct a survey of manufacturing firms in Uganda, which uncovers an active rental market for large machines between small firms in informal clusters. We then build an equilibrium model of firm behavior and estimate it with our data. We find that the rental market is quantitatively important for mechanization and productivity since it provides a workaround for other market imperfections that keep firms small. The rental market also shapes the effectiveness of development policies to foster mechanization, such as subsidies to purchase machines. Overall, our results point to the importance of taking into account firm‐to‐firm interactions within informal clusters to understand technology adoption in low income countries: focusing on the small scale of firms in isolation might be misleading.

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Supplemental Material

Supplement to "Achieving Scale Collectively"

Vittorio Bassi, Raffaela Muoio, Tommaso Porzio, Ritwika Sen, and Esau Tugume

This zip file contains the replication files to the manuscript.

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Supplement to "Achieving Scale Collectively"

Vittorio Bassi, Raffaela Muoio, Tommaso Porzio, Ritwika Sen, and Esau Tugume

The Online Appendix is divided into four sections: Appendix A reports additional empirical results that expand on evidence presented in Section 3. Appendix B includes proofs and details on the model solution. In Appendix C, we detail the computation of calibrated parameters and moments that are not already described in the paper. Finally, in Appendix D we study the prevalence of the rental market across countries. A Supplemental Appendix not intended for publication can be found on the authors’ websites.

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March 5, 2024

Announcing the New Journal Editors

The terms of the Editors of the Econometric Society's three journals end June 30, 2025. We are pleased to announce the incoming Editors and to thank the outgoing Editors for their excellent and continuing service.

Econometrica: Since 2019, Guido Imbens has served as the 14th Editor of Econometrica. On July 1, 2025, Marina Halac will become the Editor.

Quantitative Economics: Stéphane Bonhomme has been the Editor of Quantitative Economics since 2021. His successor will be Bernard Salanié.

Theoretical Economics: The Editor of Theoretical Economics since 2021 has been Simon Board. Taking over for him in July 2025 will be Federico Echenique.

Guido, Stéphane, and Simon have been outstanding Editors. We are grateful to them for the work they have done and will continue to do, and we look forward to further congratulating them next year. We believe Marina, Bernard, and Federico will be outstanding successors and we thank them in advance for their service.

Finally, we are grateful to Larry Samuelson for chairing all three search committees, and we thank the search committee members for their hard and fruitful work:

Econometrica: Christian Dustmann, Lars Hansen, Alessandro Lizzeri, George Mailath, Ariel Pakes, Helene Rey, and Elie Tamer.

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TE: Jeff Ely, Johannes Horner, Gilat Levy, Meg Meyer, and Ran Spiegler.

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