Data for: Crowding Out as a Cause of U.S. Declining Business Dynamism

A common characteristic of market economies has been the way firms are continually born, failing, expanding, and contracting (Schumpeter, 1942), a process referred to as business dynamism or creative destruction. The United States became the leading market economy due to the dynamic economic expansion recorded over the last two centuries. Over this period, U.S. business dynamism has been positive, meaning that more firms are born than fail, but there has been a noticeable decline, as described by Hathaway and Lithan (2014a, p.1): The U.S. economy is in a constant state of churn. Historically one new business is born about every minute, while another one fails every eighty seconds. In 2012, there were 13.4 million private sector jobs created or destroyed each quarter—that’s equivalent to one in eight private sector jobs. Despite all of that churning, only 600 thousand net jobs were created each quarter during that same year. That’s equal to about half a percent of private employment. Hathaway and Litan (2014c) show that U.S. declining business dynamism affects productivity and entrepreneurship, and results in consolidation of the monopoly power of older firms. Hathaway and Litan (2014b) and Hathaway et al. (2014) further show that U.S. business sector created 12 new firms per business establishment in 1978 to 6.2 in 2011. So, U.S. business dynamism has declined. The question becomes what factors might be contributing to declining business dynamism in the United States? To address this question, this paper examines how U.S. exports and imports, the federal government deficit, and tax-exempt nonprofits may be contributing to declining U.S. business dynamism. Exports and imports are proxies for the effects of foreign competition on the U.S. economy. Intuitively, this may be used to measure the impact of globalization on the business sector. The federal government deficit is a proxy for the role of U.S. government in the economy. Tax-exempt nonprofits are included to find out if the increasing numbers of nonprofits in recent decades has encroached on the traditional activities of profit-making businesses. In other words, the federal government deficit and tax-exempt nonprofits may capture the impact of changing structure of the economy on the business sector. This paper explores how these variables influence the level of business dynamism and is organized as follows. It explores the literature on business dynamism followed by a review to identify variables and sources of data. Then, the paper presents the model specification and test results and interpretations. In sum, we found that the government (federal government deficit) and foreign (compositions of export and import) sectors have impacted negatively on the U.S. business dynamism over the study period. The concluding remarks focus on the policy implications of the study findings.

市场经济的普遍特征之一，是企业持续诞生、消亡、扩张与收缩的动态过程（熊彼特，1942），该过程被称为商业活力（business dynamism）或创造性破坏（creative destruction）。美国在过去两个世纪中凭借持续的经济扩张，成为全球领先的市场经济体。在此期间，美国的商业活力曾长期处于正向状态，即新诞生的企业数量多于倒闭的企业，但正如哈撒韦与利坦（Hathaway and Lithan，2014a，第1页）所描述的，美国经济始终处于持续的更迭流转状态：历史上平均每分钟就有一家新企业诞生，而每80秒就有一家企业倒闭。2012年，美国私营部门每季度新增或流失的就业岗位达1340万个，相当于每8个私营部门就业岗位中就有1个参与了该轮流转。尽管存在如此大规模的岗位更迭，同年每季度仅实现了60万个净新增就业岗位，仅占私营部门就业总量的约0.5%。

哈撒韦与利坦（Hathaway and Litan，2014c）的研究表明，美国商业活力的衰退会对生产率与创业活动产生负面影响，并导致老牌企业的垄断权力进一步集中。哈撒韦与利坦（Hathaway and Litan，2014b）以及哈撒韦等人（Hathaway et al.，2014）的进一步研究显示，1978年美国商业领域每一家现存企业对应12家新创立企业，到2011年这一比例降至6.2。由此可见，美国的商业活力已出现衰退。

那么，究竟哪些因素导致了美国商业活力的衰退？为解答这一问题，本文探讨了美国进出口规模、联邦政府赤字以及免税非营利组织对美国商业活力衰退的影响。进出口可作为外国竞争对美国经济影响的代理变量（proxy），以此直观衡量全球化对商业部门的作用效果。联邦政府赤字则用于表征美国政府在经济中的角色。纳入免税非营利组织这一变量，旨在探究近数十年来非营利组织数量的增长是否侵蚀了营利性企业的传统经营活动。换言之，联邦政府赤字与免税非营利组织这两个变量，可用于捕捉经济结构变迁对商业部门的影响。

本文将探究上述变量对商业活力水平的影响，文章结构安排如下：首先梳理商业活力相关文献，通过文献综述明确研究变量与数据来源；随后展示模型设定、检验结果及相应解读。综上，本文发现研究期内，政府部门（联邦政府赤字）与涉外部门（进出口结构）对美国商业活力产生了显著负向影响。最后，结语部分将探讨本研究发现的政策启示。