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The role of start-ups in structural transformation
Abstract: The U.S. economy has been going through a striking structural transformation?the secular reallocation of employment across sectors?over the past several decades. We propose a decomposition framework to assess the contributions of various margins of firm dynamics to this shift. Using firm-level data, we find that at least 50 percent of the adjustment has been taking place along the entry margin, owing to sectors receiving shares of start-up employment that differ from their overall employment shares. The rest is mostly the result of life cycle differences across sectors. Declining overall entry has a small but growing effect of dampening structural transformation.
Keywords: structural transformation; employment dynamics; sectoral reallocation;
JEL Classification: E24; J00; J23; L25;
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Bibliographic Information
Provider: Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Part of Series: Staff Reports
Publication Date: 2016-01-01
Number: 762