Ayşegül Şahin

Grown-up Business Cycles

The entry rate of U.S. employer businesses has declined for more than 30 years. We use a novel dynamic decomposition framework to show that regardless of its causes, the direct effects of the continued decline in the entry rate and its delayed effects on the firm age distribution together play a major role in the slowing of trend employment growth and the emergence of jobless recoveries. We identify changing demographic structure of the population and increased import competition as leading factors behind the decline in startup activity.Received September 1, 2015; editorial decision April 5, 2018 by Editor Francesca Cornelli. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.