Search Results
Working Paper
Firm Dynamics and SOE Transformation During China's Economic Reform
We study China’s state-owned enterprises (SOE) reform with a focus on the corporatization of SOEs. We first empirically document that small SOEs are more likely to exit or become privatized, whereas big SOEs are more likely to be corporatized while remaining under state ownership. We then build a heterogeneous-firm model featuring financial frictions, endogenous entry and exit, and optimal firm-type choices. Our calibrated model suggests that in the long run, the SOE reform increases the aggregate output by facilitating resource reallocation to the private sector. Along the transition, the ...
Working Paper
Aggregate Consequences of Dynamic Credit Relationships
Which financial frictions matter in the aggregate? This paper presents a general equilibrium model in which entrepreneurs finance a firm with a long-term contract. The contract is constrained efficient because firm revenue is costly to monitor and entrepreneurs may default. The cost of monitoring firms and the entrepreneurs' outside options determine the significance of moral hazard relative to limited enforcement for financial contracting. Calibrating the model to the U.S. economy, I find that the relative welfare loss from financial frictions is about 5 percent in terms of aggregate ...
Report
Brand Reallocation and Market Concentration
We study the interaction of customer capital and productivity through brand reallocation across firms. We develop a firm dynamics model with brands as transferable customer capital, heterogeneous firm productivity, and variable markups. We study the matching process between transferable brand capital and core productivity, which can be inefficient with significant welfare implications. We link USPTO trademark data with Nielsen sales data to study the prevalence of brand reallocation and the response of sales and prices to reallocation. Quantitatively, brand reallocation reduces welfare. ...
Report
Need for Speed: Quality of Innovations and the Allocation of Inventors
This paper studies how the speed-quality tradeoff in innovation interacts with firm dynamics, concentration, and economic growth. Empirically, we document long-run trends in the increasing speed of innovation alongside declining quality at large firms. Leveraging variation from an exogenous policy change, we document the existence of the speed-quality tradeoff both at the firm and aggregate level. We develop an endogenous growth model that incorporates the speed-quality tradeoff and show that allocating less labor towards speed increases growth, particularly in the presence of private ...
Report
Firm Dynamics and Random Search over the Business Cycle
I build a tractable random search model with firm dynamics, on-the-job search, and aggregate shocks. Multi-worker firms make recruitment decisions, choose whether to enter or exit the market, and design wage contracts. Tractability is obtained by showing that, under a set of assumptions on the recruitment technology, the decisions of workers and firms can be expressed in terms of the firms’ current productivity. I introduce a numerical solution method to accommodate aggregate shocks in this environment and show that the model can replicate salient features of both firm-level data on ...
Working Paper
The Firm Size and Leverage Relationship and Its Implications for Entry and Concentration in a Low Interest Rate World
Larger firms (by sales or employment) have higher leverage. This pattern is explained using a model in which firms produce multiple varieties and borrow with the option to default against their future cash ow. A variety can die with a constant probability, implying that bigger firms (those with more varieties) have lower coefficient of variation of sales and higher leverage. A lower risk-free rate benefits bigger firms more as they are able to lever more and existing firms buy more of the new varieties arriving into the economy. This leads to lower startup rates and greater concentration of ...
Working Paper
Barriers to Creative Destruction: Large Firms and Nonproductive Strategies
This working paper reviews recent empirical evidence on large firms and nonproductivestrategies that hinder creative destruction and reallocation. The focus is on three types ofnonproductive strategies: political connections, nonproductive patenting, and anticompetitiveacquisitions. Across different contexts using granular micro data sets, we overwhelmingly see that asfirms gain market share, they increasingly rely on nonproductive strategies but reduce theirproductive, innovation-based strategies. I also discuss theoretical channels, aggregate implications,and potentials for some policies.
Report
Demographic origins of the startup deficit
We propose a simple explanation for the long-run decline in the U.S. startup rate. It originates from a slowdown in labor supply growth since the late 1970s, largely pre-determined by demographics. This channel can explain roughly 60 percent of the decline and why incumbent firm survival and average growth over the lifecycle have changed little. We show these results in a standard model of firm dynamics and test the mechanism using cross-state variation in labor supply growth. Finally, we show that a longer entry rate series imputed using historical establishment tabulations rises over the ...
Report
A unified approach to measuring u*
This paper bridges the gap between two popular approaches to estimating the natural rate of unemployment, u*. The first approach uses detailed labor market indicators, such as labor market flows, cross-sectional data on unemployment and vacancies, or various measures of demographic changes. The second approach, which employs reduced-form models and DSGE models, relies on aggregate price and wage Phillips curve relationships. We combine the key features of these two approaches to estimate the natural rate of unemployment in the United States using both data on labor market flows and a ...
Working Paper
Entrepreneurship through Employee Mobility, Innovation, and Growth
Firm-level productivity differences are big and largely ascribed to ex-ante heterogeneity in the entrepreneurs’ growth potential at birth. Where do these ex-ante differences come from, and what can the policy do to encourage the entry of high-growth entrepreneurs? I study empirically and by means of a quantitative growth model the spinout firms: the firms founded by former employees of the incumbent firms. By focusing on innovating spinouts identified through the inventor mobility in the patent data, I document that spinout entrants significantly outperform regular entrants throughout their ...