Claudio Michelacci

Why So Many Local Entrepreneurs

We document that the fraction of entrepreneurs working in the region where they were born is significantly higher than the corresponding fraction for dependent workers. This is more pronounced in more developed regions and positively related to the degree of local financial development. Firms created by locals are bigger, operate with more capital-intensive technologies, and obtain greater financing per unit of capital invested, than firms created by nonlocals. This suggests that there are so many local entrepreneurs because locals can better exploit the financial opportunities available in the region where they were born. This helps to explain how local financial development causes persistent disparities in entrepreneurial activity, technology, and income.

Low Returns in R&D Due to the Lack of Entrepreneurial Skills*

This paper proposes a model of endogenous growth where innovating requires both researchers, who produce inventions, and entrepreneurs who implement them. As research and entrepreneurship compete in the allocation of aggregate resources, the relation between growth and research effort is hump-shaped. When entrepreneurs appropriate too little rents from innovation, too few resources are allocated to entrepreneurship and returns to R&D are low because of this lack of entrepreneurial skills. When so, innovation should be promoted by encouraging entrepreneurship rather than research.

Fractional) Beta Convergence

Unit roots in output, an exponential 2 per cent rate of convergence and no change in the underlying dynamics of output seem to be three stylized facts that cannot go together. This paper extends the Solow-Swan growth model allowing for cross-sectional heterogeneity. In this framework, aggregate shocks might vanish at a hyperbolic rather than at an exponential rate. This implies that the level of output can exhibit long memory and that standard tests fail to reject the null of a unit root despite mean reversion. Exploiting secular time series properties GDP, we conclude that traditional approaches to test for uniform (conditional and unconditional) convergence suit first step approximation. We show both theoretically and empirically how the uniform 2 per cent rate of convergence repeatedly found in the empirical literature is the outcome of an underlying parameter of fractional integration strictly between 1/2 and 1. This is consistent with both time series and cross-sectional evidence recently produced.

Employment and Output Adjustment in the OECD: A Disaggregate Analysis of the Role of Job Security Provisions

Job security provisions are frequently cited as inhibiting the functioning of labour markets in Europe. However, as with many forms of non-price regulation, it is difficult to assess how tightly these regulations bind and influence labour market outcomes. We use an industry-country panel of OECD countries over 20 years to estimate adjustment paths for employment and output conditional on wages, the capital stock and exchange rates. We find that job security provisions are correlated with the speed of adjustment of employment and output (restrictive legislation slowing adjustment down), and that controlling for industry effects is important in isolating this effect. Copyright 2000 by The London School of Economics and Political Science

The Ins and Outs of Unemployment: An Analysis Conditional on Technology Shocks

We analyze how unemployment, job finding and job separation rates react to neutral and investment-specific technology shocks. Neutral shocks increase unemployment and explain a substantial portion of it volatility; investment-specific shocks expand employment and hours worked and contribute to hours worked volatility. Movements in the job separation rates are responsible for the impact response of unemployment while job finding rates for movements along its adjustment path. The evidence warns against using models with exogenous separation rates and challenges the conventional way of modelling technology shocks in search and sticky price models.

The Labour Market Effects of Technology Shocks

We analyze the effects of neutral and investment-specific technology shocks on hours worked and unemployment. We characterize the response of unemployment in terms of job separation and job finding rates. We find that job separation rates mainly account for the impact response of unemployment while job finding rates for movements along its adjustment path. Neutral shocks increase unemployment and explain a substantial portion of unemployment and output volatility; investment-specific shocks expand employment and hours worked and mostly contribute to hours worked volatility. We show that this evidence is consistent with the view that neutral technological progress prompts Schumpeterian creative destruction, while investment specific technological progress has standard neoclassical features.

On the Robust Effects of Technology Shocks on Hours Worked and Output

We analyze the effects of neutral and investment-specific technology shocks on hours worked and output. Low frequency movements in hours are captured in a variety of ways. Hours robustly fall in response to neutral shocks and robustly increase in response to investment specific shocks. The percentage of the variance of hours (output) explained by neutral shocks is small (large); the opposite is true for investment specific shocks. News shocks and other shocks are uncorrelated with the estimated neutral and investment specific shocks.