{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,26]],"date-time":"2026-08-26T06:50:28Z","timestamp":1787727028551,"version":"build-2784847793"},"reference-count":60,"publisher":"The Econometric Society","issue":"4","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,1,1]],"date-time":"2026-01-01T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1767225600000},"content-version":"unspecified","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/100006734","name":"Princeton University","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","id":[{"id":"10.13039\/100006734","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100020171","name":"Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100020171","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100020171","name":"Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100020171","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["ECTA"],"abstract":"<jats:p>I document that the right tail of the firm size distribution systematically thickens with economic development. To rationalize this fact, I develop a parsimonious idea search model in which both aggregate growth and the firm size distribution are endogenously determined. The model features an asymptotic balanced growth path along which Gibrat's law holds at each date, and the right tail of the firm size distribution thickens monotonically toward Zipf's law. The model also implies that policies favoring large firms can improve welfare by better utilizing the diffusion externalities arising from idea search.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3982\/ecta22110","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,16]],"date-time":"2026-07-16T13:05:52Z","timestamp":1784207152000},"page":"1375-1408","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":2,"title":["Economic Growth and the Rise of Large Firms"],"prefix":"10.3982","volume":"94","author":[{"given":"Zhang","family":"Chen","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Economics, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"2359","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026]]},"reference":[{"key":"ecta70053-bib-0001","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Akcigit, Ufuk, Santiago Caicedo, Ernest Miguelez, Stefanie Stantcheva, and Valerio Sterzi (2018), \u201cDancing With the Stars: Innovation Through Interactions.\u201d Tech. 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