Regarding the latter, Jones (2017) reports key results of the literature that associates the dispersion of marginal products of the same factors across firms in the US and in Europe with degrees of misallocation (e.g. Gopinath et al. 2017, highlighting deteriorating factor allocation in Italy and Spain). A recent paper by Bils et al.
A business executive of a shoe company was sent to a large developing country to assess the market potential there. What he saw was millions of people  2  163/2009  going without shoes. He came back and reported to the management that there was no business potential there because no one wears shoes.