Superstar firms: How the shift from manufacturing to services affects local concentration of sales and jobs

The leading US firms in many industries have increased their national market share substantially over the last four decades – making these industries more concentrated. But locally the picture is more complex. David Autor, Christina Patterson and John Van Reenen show that while the local concentration of sales in the US has also risen, the concentration of local employment has fallen. These divergent trends are driven by the same underlying economic factor: the shift from manufacturing to services.