Small and young businesses are essential for job creation, innovation, and economic growth. Even most of the superstar …

issues at the core of this ongoing debate. We find that the relationship between firm size and employment growth is sensitive …

, we exploit the recently developed Longitudinal Business Database (LBD), which contains annual observations on employment …, the employment-weighted mean volatility of firm growth rates has declined by more than 40% since 1982. This result stands … volatility among privately held firms. This pattern holds in every major industry group. Employment shifts toward older …

employment growth rate distribution grew about 31 percent faster than the median firm. Moreover, the 90-50 differential was 16 … percent larger than the 50-10 differential reflecting the positive skewness of the employment growth rate distribution. We … show that the shape of the firm employment growth distribution changes substantially in the post-2000 period. By 2007, the …

, age, and prior growth. Relative to controls, employment at target establishments declines 3 percent over two years post … at target firms are less than 1 percent of initial employment. In contrast, the sum of gross job creation and destruction … at target firms exceeds that of controls by 13 percent of employment over two years. In short, private equity buyouts …