Productivity of small manufacturing firmsa

Considerable policy interest warrants a closer look at small and medium sized firms. Using an a sample of manufacturing plants from the Annual Respondents Database (ARD). I find that plants owned by small single firms have significantly lower productivity than larger non single plants. Decomposing aggregate productivity growth into the contributions of various plant types, I do not find any evidence for an over proportional contribution of small firm plants. The biggest contribution comes from large multi plant firms. For small single plants the contribution of net entry plays a bigger role relative to continuing plants productivity growth than for other plant types. A Discussion Paper Centre for Research into Business Activity www.CeRiBA.org.uk CeRiB This work contains statistical data from ONS which is Crown copyright and reproduced with the permission of the controller of HMSO and Queen’s Printer for Scotland. The use of the ONS statistical data in this work does not imply the endorsement of the ONS in relation to the interpretation or analysis of the statistical data.