This paper explores how macroeconomic conditions affect firm dynamics in Egypt between 1911 and 1948 by constructing an extensive dataset of all companies ever founded in this period. By exploiting Egyptian economy's specialization in cotton exports, I use fluctuations in the world price of cotton to identify the direct impact of the business cycle on firm entry, exit, and growth. The analysis shows that growth occurred primarily at the extensive margin. Firm entry was procyclical but exit and growth were both acyclical. The new evidence reveals cyclical selection into entry. Booms systematically selected low quality entrants, which were smaller, less likely to grow after entry, and frailer than other cohorts. Bust cohorts were larger, more likely to grow, and more robust. The quality differences were persistent over the firms' lifecycles. These new findings support a theory of firm dynamics with ex-ante heterogeneous firms, permanent productivity differences between cohorts, and economic adjustment through the extensive margin of entry.

This paper examines how the state of the economy when businesses begin operations affects their size and performance over the lifecycle. Using micro-level data that covers the entire universe of businesses operating in the U.S. since the late 1970s, I provide new evidence that businesses born in downturns start on a smaller scale and remain smaller over their entire lifecycle. In fact, I find no evidence that these differences attenuate even long after entry. Using new data on the productivity and composition of startup businesses, I show that this persistence is related to selection at entry and demand-side channels. In order to evaluate the relative importance of these two mechanisms, I build a model of firm dynamics that includes aggregate shocks, idiosyncratic productivity, and a demand accumulation process. When I mute the effects of selection mechanisms, I find that the average initial size differences are more procyclical, but they are less persistent over time. Finally, I use the model to quantitatively evaluate the role of the persistent effects of entry conditions in the propagation of the Great Recession. My model simulations indicate that the impact of the crisis on the 2008-2009 cohorts reduces aggregate employment by at least one percentage point in the following ten years.

This paper examines the variation in life cycle growth across the universe of Mexican firms. We establish two stylized facts to motivate our analysis: first, we show that firm size matters for development by illustrating a close correlation with state-level per capita incomes. Second, we show that few firms grow as much as their U.S. peers while the majority stagnates at less than twice their initial size. To gain insights into the distinguishing characteristics of the two groups, we then econometrically decompose life cycle growth across firms. We find that firms that have financial access and multiple establishments and that are formal, part of diversified industries and located in population centers can grow at sizeable rates.

Providing an analysis of the Tibet question, this work explores essential themes and issues concerning modern Tibet. It considers such topics as representations and sovereignty, economic development and political conditions, the exile movement and human rights, historical legacies and international politics, identity issues and the local society.

This volume presents six new papers on environmental and energy economics and policy in the United States. Rebecca Davis, J. Scott Holladay, and Charles Sims analyze recent trends in and forecasts of coal-fired power plant retirements with and without new climate policy. Severin Borenstein and James Bushnell examine the efficiency of pricing for electricity, natural gas, and gasoline. James Archsmith, Erich Muehlegger, and David Rapson provide a prospective analysis of future pathways for electric vehicle adoption. Kenneth Gillingham considers the consequences of such pathways for the design of fuel vehicle economy standards. Frank Wolak investigates the long-term resource adequacy in wholesale electricity markets with significant intermittent renewables. Finally, Barbara Annicchiarico, Stefano Carattini, Carolyn Fischer, and Garth Heutel review the state of research on the interactions between business cycles and environmental policy.

The Geography of Firm Dynamics provides methods and data to measure and analyse the creation and destruction of businesses across OECD regions.

This paper studies the macroeconomic effect and underlying firm-level transmission channels of a reduction in business entry costs. We provide novel evidence on the response of firms' entry, exit, and employment decisions. To do so, we use as a natural experiment a reform in Portugal that reduced entry time and costs. Using the staggered implementation of the policy across the Portuguese municipalities, we find that the reform increased local entry and employment by, respectively, 25% and 4.8% per year in its first four years of implementation. Moreover, around 60% of the increase in employment came from incumbent firms expanding their size, with most of the rise occurring among the most productive firms. Standard models of firm dynamics, which assume a constant elasticity of substitution, are inconsistent with the expansionary and heterogeneous response across incumbent firms. We show that in a model with heterogeneous firms and variable markups the most productive firms face a lower demand elasticity and expand their employment in response to increased entry.