The impact of vintage and survival on productivity: Evidence from cohorts of US manufacturing plants

This paper examines the evolution of productivity in U.S. manufacturing pla nts from 1963 to 1992. We define a vintage effect as the change in producti vity of recent cohorts of new plants relative to earlier cohorts of new pla nts, and a survival effect as the change in productivity of a particular co hort of surviving plants as it ages. Both factors contribute to industry pr oductivity growth, but play offsetting roles in determining a cohort's rela tive position in the productivity distribution. Recent cohorts enter with h igher productivity than earlier entrants did, whereas surviving cohorts sho w productivity increases as they age. These two effects roughly offset each other, however, so there is a rough convergence in productivity across coh orts in 1992 and 1987.