Individual managers impact retail business productivity substantially; replacing a manager at the bottom of the quality distribution by one at the top could increase a store’s productivity by between 50% and 100%.

Driven by the sizable shift in sales and employment from the relatively concentrated manufacturing sector to the relatively unconcentrated service sector, local concentration in sales has increased in parallel to national sales concentration, while local concentration in employment has declined, despite rising at the national level.

US corporate concentration has increased persistently over the past century, with the manufacturing and mining sectors consolidating at a faster pace prior to the 1970s, and with the services, retail, and wholesale sectors taking the lead since. These long-run trends appear in line with stronger economies of scale.

Measurement error alone cannot explain the decline in US construction productivity over the last 50 years, with evidence pointing to the sector’s deteriorating ability to transform intermediates into finished products, and to the allocative inefficiency of construction inputs.

Demolitions of public housing as part of urban renewal programs had disparate impacts and generated large welfare improvements for White households, alongside welfare losses for low-income minority households.

Of US respondents to a national survey, 61% say firms should exit Russia, regardless of the consequences; 37% think that leaving Russia is a purely business decision; while 66% would boycott nonconforming businesses, but desire to boycott diminishes as respondent costs rise.

Investment is strongly and robustly negatively associated with higher uncertainty; uncertainty is also negatively related to employment growth and overall shipments (sales) growth; and flexible inputs like rental capital and temporary workers show a positive relationship to uncertainty.

Firms completed over $2.3 trillion of undisclosed mergers between 2002 and 2016, representing 30% of all merger activity.