SBE-UKRI: Business Cycles, Uncertain Growth and the Distribution of Production

大衰退以来的十年里，缺乏新的商业创造和缓慢的经济增长。 这个项目探讨了这两种现象之间的相互作用，使用一个模型经济与丰富的差异，在企业。 模型经济再现了美国经济中企业的长期规模和年龄分布，从而产生了企业生命周期。 新企业通常规模较小，并随着时间的推移而增长，因此初创企业在经济中变得更加重要。 因此，初创企业数量减少对整体经济的影响随着时间的推移而增长。 最初的生产和就业损失很小，但没有新公司意味着长期成本远远大于最初的损失。 该项目探讨了可能解释持续缺乏创业公司的力量。 该项目的结果将有助于研究人员和政策制定者更好地了解过去十年经济增长缓慢的原因，以及企业数量的长期减少如何导致经济复苏缓慢。该项目调查了过去十年国内生产总值和投资增长相对于趋势的缓慢，以及企业进入的持续减少。 该研究探讨了可能的力量驱动大，长期的变化，在新的业务形成使用定量模型与内生进入和退出。 模型经济包括一个分布的公司，不同沿着几个方面，包括他们的年龄，生产力，资本和债务。 这种分布的变化会传播外部冲击。 此外，该模型考虑到反周期风险溢价，从而使公司价值发生重大变化。 因此，它有可能重现类似于数据中的持续减少。 在这种背景下，该项目探讨了持续冲击对全要素生产率增长的影响、未来增长不确定性的增加以及对公司借贷成本的冲击。 模型经济是从企业进入这一透镜的角度来评价经济复苏缓慢的根源的实验室，研究这种冲击对整体经济和企业间生产分配的影响。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

AbstractThe decade since the Great Recession has seen a lack of new business creation and slow economic growth. This project explores the interplay between these two phenomena using a model economy with rich differences across businesses. The model economy reproduces the long-run size and age distribution of firms in the U.S. economy and thus gives rise to a firm life cycle. New businesses are typically small and grow over time, so startups become more important in the economy as they mature. As a result, the effect on the overall economy from a decrease in the number of startups grows with time. The initial loss of production and employment is small, but the absence of new firms implies a long-term cost that is far larger than the initial loss. The project explores forces that may explain a persistent lack of startups. The results of the project will help researchers and policymakers better understand both the causes underlying the past decade of slow growth and how long-term reductions in the number of firms contribute to the slow recovery. The project investigates the slow GDP and investment growth over the past decade, relative to trend, alongside the persistent reduction in firm entry. The research explores possible forces driving large, long-lived changes in new business formation using a quantitative model with endogenous entry and exit. The model economy includes a distribution of firms that differ along several dimensions including their age, productivity, capital and debt. Changes in this distribution propagate exogenous shocks. Moreover, the model allows for countercyclical risk premia and thus large changes in firm value. As a result, it has the potential to reproduce persistent reductions in entry similar to those in the data. In this setting, the project explores the effect of persistent shocks to total factor productivity growth, increases in the uncertainty of future growth and shocks to firms’ cost of borrowing. The model economy serves as a laboratory to evaluate the sources of the slow economic recovery through the lens of firm entry, and is used to study the effect of such shocks both on the aggregate economy and on the distribution of production across firms.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.