Featured paper · 2023
What Happened to U.S. Business Dynamism?
The textbook account of why the U.S. economy's startup rate fell, why the largest incumbents grew larger, and why aggregate productivity growth slowed. The paper builds and estimates a structural model that nests ten stylized facts about the American firm distribution.
Ufuk Akcigit, Sina T. Ates. Journal of Political Economy, 2023.
The policy line
The decline in U.S. dynamism is not a mystery. It is a measurable consequence of falling knowledge diffusion and rising barriers to imitation. Both are policy levers.
Summary
The textbook account of why the U.S. economy's startup rate fell, why the largest incumbents grew larger, and why aggregate productivity growth slowed. The paper builds and estimates a structural model that nests ten stylized facts about the American firm distribution.
The Academy uses this paper as a primary text across its five pillars. The full text is available at the publisher.
