{"title":"Slower Productivity and Higher Inequality: Are They Related?","authors":"Jason Furman, Peter R. Orszag","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3191984","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3191984","url":null,"abstract":"Income growth for typical American families has slowed dramatically since 1973. Slower productivity growth and an increase in income inequality have both contributed to this trend. This paper addresses whether there is a relationship between the productivity slowdown and the increase in inequality, specifically exploring the extent to which reduced competition and dynamism can explain both of these phenomena. Productivity growth has been uneven across the economy, with top firms earning increasingly skewed returns. At the same time, the between-firm disparities have been important in explaining the increase in labor income inequality. Both these findings are consistent with the observed reductions in competition, as evidenced by increasing concentration and economic rents, and business dynamism. The authors also explore the scenarios under which government policies can help mitigate, or contribute to, declining competition and dynamism.","PeriodicalId":421623,"journal":{"name":"Kauffman: Data (Topic)","volume":"57 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133763452","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Innovation, Productivity Dispersion, and Productivity Growth","authors":"L. Foster, Cheryl Grim, J. Haltiwanger, Z. Wolf","doi":"10.3386/W24420","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3386/W24420","url":null,"abstract":"We examine whether underlying industry innovation dynamics are an important driver of the large dispersion in productivity across firms within narrowly defined sectors. Our hypothesis is that periods of rapid innovation are accompanied by high rates of entry, significant experimentation and, in turn, a high degree of productivity dispersion. Following this experimentation phase, successful innovators and adopters grow while unsuccessful innovators contract and exit yielding productivity growth. We examine the dynamic relationship between entry, productivity dispersion, and productivity growth using a new comprehensive firm-level dataset for the U.S. We find a surge of entry within an industry yields with a lag an increase in productivity dispersion and then after a subsequent lag an increase in productivity growth. These patterns are more pronounced for the High Tech sector where we expect there to be more innovative activities. These patterns change over time suggesting other forces are at work during the post-2000 slowdown in aggregate productivity.","PeriodicalId":421623,"journal":{"name":"Kauffman: Data (Topic)","volume":"205 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114980053","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Leasing Decisions of Small, Privately Held Firms","authors":"Carmen Cotei, Joseph Farhat","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2782794","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2782794","url":null,"abstract":"We analyze the impact of firm’s asset uniqueness and its growth opportunities on the leasing decisions of U.S. startups. To test our hypotheses, we use a unique dataset provided by the Kauffman Foundation. Our results show that startups in the high-technology sector have a lower propensity to lease whereas startups with high R&D intensity have a higher propensity to lease. In addition, we examine the impact of owners’ characteristics on the decisions to lease and find that female and older entrepreneurs as well as highly educated owners are less likely to lease. Our findings confirm previous studies on leasing decisions that larger and more leveraged businesses have a higher propensity to lease their assets. Consistent with Ang and Peterson (1984) and Bathala and Mukerjee (1995) we report that leasing and debt are complements rather than substitutes to each other.","PeriodicalId":421623,"journal":{"name":"Kauffman: Data (Topic)","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-05-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127632656","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Annual Survey of Entrepreneurs: An Introduction","authors":"L. Foster, Patrice Norman","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2689868","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2689868","url":null,"abstract":"The Census Bureau continually seeks to improve its measures of the U.S. economy as part of its mission. In some cases this means expanding or updating the content of its existing surveys, expanding the use of administrative data, and/or exploring the use of privately collected data. When these options cannot provide the needed data, the Census Bureau may consider fielding a new survey to fill the gap. This paper describes one such new survey, the Annual Survey of Entrepreneurs (ASE). Innovations in content, format, and process are designed to provide high-quality, timely, frequent information on the activities of one of the important drivers of economic growth: entrepreneurship. The ASE is collected through a partnership of the Census Bureau with the Kauffman Foundation and the Minority Business Development Agency. The first wave of the ASE collection started in fall of 2015 (for reference period 2014) and results will be released in summer 2016. Qualified researchers on approved projects will be able to access micro data from the ASE through the Federal Statistical Research Data Center (FSRDC) network.","PeriodicalId":421623,"journal":{"name":"Kauffman: Data (Topic)","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132000350","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Market Size Structure and Small Business Lending: Are Crisis Times Different from Normal Times?","authors":"Allen N. Berger, G. Cerqueiro, M. F. Penas","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2261932","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2261932","url":null,"abstract":"Conventional wisdom holds that small banks have comparative advantages vis-a-vis large banks in serving small firms, while recent literature suggests this may not be the case. Using a panel of recent US start-ups, we investigate how small bank presence affects these firms in normal times (2004–06) and in the recent financial crisis (2007–09). We find that greater small bank presence yields significantly more lending to and slightly lower failure rates of these firms during normal times. However, these benefits disappear during the financial crisis, possibly because small banks are less diversified and benefit less from government guarantees than large banks.","PeriodicalId":421623,"journal":{"name":"Kauffman: Data (Topic)","volume":"52 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-08-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115053076","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Beg, Borrow, and Deal? Entrepreneurs’ Choice of Financing and New Firm Innovation","authors":"Sheryl Winston Smith","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1787759","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1787759","url":null,"abstract":"Entrepreneurs rely on a spectrum of financing options for new companies. I analyze two key aspects: the role of debt and bank loans in the early financing of new firms and the relationship between financing choice and subsequent innovation trajectory. I use microdata in the confidential Kauffman Firm Survey (KFS) dataset. The results suggest bank loans play a role in early stage financing in firms across a spectrum of high-technology industries. Second, conditional on the initial financing mix I use a two-stage analysis to probe the relationship between financing and innovation. In a novel strategy, I exploit the role of entrepreneurial optimism to discern the relationship between debt financing and innovation outcomes, conditional on the endogenous choice of financing.","PeriodicalId":421623,"journal":{"name":"Kauffman: Data (Topic)","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114176779","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Measuring Success of Advanced Technology Program Participation Using Archival Data","authors":"L. Zucker, M. Darby","doi":"10.3386/W9780","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3386/W9780","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines the value of collecting archival data to evaluate the Advanced Technology Program's (ATP) impact on participants' short- and long-term business success. We use two types of indicators of business success: patenting activity which can be tracked for all participants, and financial market data which is extensive for public firms but limited for start-up and other private firms to receipt of venture capital, membership in joint ventures and strategic alliances, and going public in issuing stock. We compare effects of program design differences, primarily joint venture versus single participant projects, on changes in the rate of patenting before and after participation in ATP. The discussion of patent archives serves to document data for later analyses; discussion of other data sources is intended both to guide other researchers and to inform administrative decisions about collecting similar archival data as part of routine assessment activity. We find that patenting rates generally increase after ATP participation under a number of different program and participant variations. Joint venture participants consistently show increases in patenting after beginning ATP participation, while results vary with definitions for single participants. We also demonstrate that it is possible to identify the timing and amounts of receipt of venture capital by private firms participating in ATP.","PeriodicalId":421623,"journal":{"name":"Kauffman: Data (Topic)","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129772549","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Present at the Revolution: Transformation of Technical Identity for a Large Incumbent Pharmaceutical Firm after the Biotechnological Breakthrough","authors":"L. Zucker, M. Darby","doi":"10.3386/W5243","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3386/W5243","url":null,"abstract":"This paper is a case study of the transformation in research methods which occurred in a large U.S. pharmaceutical firm as a result of the biotech revolution. This transformation is inconsistent with the hypothesis that technological revolutions make existing firms obsolete and consistent with our wealth-maximization hypothesis that valuable assets (like delivery know-how) will not be wasted if technological change in part of the organization is necessary to remain competitiveness. While the transformation was achieved through a various methods, the primary route was hiring new personnel who had the new technology and incorporating them into the existing structure. While the technological transformation has been profound, biotechnology applications in this large incumbent firm are more likely to be combined with other techno- logies than in the new biotechnology firms (NBFs) which use biotechnology for both discovery and production of new therapeutic entities. This difference in emphasis may result in value-enhancing synergies because of the related knowledge which makes for more effective applications of the new technologies, but it could retard full adoption of biotechnology. It appears that this firm was somewhat slower than the dedicated biotech firms to adopt the new techno- ogy, but once the decision was made to transform the technological identity of the firm massive resources were provided to recruit the human capital required to make it happen. The incumbent firms were slow to adopt biotechnology, but made great strides in the 1980s in increasing their share of all commercial ties to the star scientists as well as their share of patents.","PeriodicalId":421623,"journal":{"name":"Kauffman: Data (Topic)","volume":"40 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1995-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122921325","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}