High-Growth Firms in the United States: Key Trends and New Data Opportunities

RePEc Short ID: pgo742
ORCID iD: 0000-0003-4655-8985

Choi, Joonkyu; Goldschlag, Nathan; Haltiwanger, John; Kim, J. Daniel

doi:10.17016/FEDS.2024.074

Working Paper

High-Growth Firms in the United States: Key Trends and New Data Opportunities

Abstract: Using administrative data from the U.S. Census Bureau, we introduce a new public-use database that tracks activities across firm growth distributions over time. With these new data, we uncover several key trends for high-growth firms---critical engines of innovation and economic growth. First, the share of firms that are high-growth has steadily decreased over the past four decades, driven not only by falling rates of entrepreneurship but also languishing growth among existing firms. Second, this decline is particularly pronounced among young and small firms, while the share of high-growth firms has been relatively stable among large and old firms. We also find rich variation across states and sectors. To facilitate future research, we highlight how these data can be used to address various research questions.

Keywords: Organizational Growth; Entrepreneurship; High-Growth Firms; Business Dynamism; Publicly Available Dataset;

JEL Classification: L11; L25; L26; O30; O40;

https://doi.org/10.17016/FEDS.2024.074