Tessa Conroy

The kids are alright: working women, schedule flexibility and childcare

ABSTRACT This paper tests the effects of children and childcare on women’s employment and entrepreneurial outcomes at the county level for the United States. Given that policies and economic development strategies are often implemented across local and regional jurisdictions, this regional study contributes to the literature by considering access to childcare in relation to locally aggregated female labour market outcomes by sector. The results, which address potential endogeneity, indicate that young children and childcare affect female employment differently depending on the sector. The results are consistent with women choosing the public sector and self-employment over the private sector to accommodate the demands of childrearing.

Entrepreneurship, Growth, and Gender

The relationship between the rate of business formation and growth has long been a widely accepted but empirically nearly-neglected foundation in economics. Regional economic analysis creates the possibility of a tractable geographic scope to better capture this relationship. Along with the more recent availability of regional data with the necessary depth and breadth to properly evaluate such a framework, these analyses have finally begun to clarify the clear and often surprising links between entrepreneurship and growth. Some of the most intriguing and promising perspectives come from the additional consideration of gender within this entrepreneurship/growth structure. Women are underrepresented in entrepreneurial initiatives even in the most advanced economies, yet are quickly becoming the dominant new entrants in the highly-skilled segment of the labor force. This labor supply is the likely source of the most innovative entrepreneurial initiatives, with the greatest potential for economic value-added and job creation.

FUELING JOB ENGINES: IMPACTS OF SMALL BUSINESS LOANS ON ESTABLISHMENT BIRTHS IN METROPOLITAN AND NONMETRO COUNTIES

This study examines the effect of small business loans on subsequent establishment births in U.S. counties. Using an economic growth framework and cross-sectional empirical model, we test the hypothesis that the establishment birth rate is higher in counties where the level and annual increase in lending is greater, controlling for community-level characteristics affecting business and economic dynamics. We also consider the long-term effect of small business lending and focus on establishing the appropriate lag structure. The results indicate that small business lending does generally have a positive effect on the employer establishment birth rate that is strongest in nonmetropolitan (rural) counties. (JEL L26, R11, M13)

Business survival rates across the urban–rural divide

Abstract Scholars and practitioners have concluded that entrepreneurship and small business development is central to community economic development. Often times community members, including elected officials, are skeptical of the importance of new and small firms due to their seemingly high failure rate. In this study we use the National Establishment Time Series (NETS) database of US establishments survival rate of new firms in each US county. For each county, we identify the number of new firms born in each year and calculate their survival rate as the share of firms from each cohort still operating five years later. We then explore how survival rates change over a simple urban–rural spectrum from 1990 to 2007. As expected, survival rates vary significantly by birth year, and new businesses in rural communities tend to have higher survival rates than those in urban communities. We close the study with a discussion of specific policy options.

Women business owners: a source of stability during the great recession?

ABSTRACT During the period of the Great Recession, previous research has found that women-owned firms were less likely to lay-off workers than were firms owned by men. Given that the individual firm behaviour has a cumulative effect on regional economic performance, we expect greater stability across those regions with a larger share of women-owned and managed businesses. We test this hypothesis using US county data during the period from 2007 to 2013 at the US county level. Consistent with the findings of Matsa and Miller, our results suggest that regional economic stability increases with the share of women-owned and managed establishments.