Firm creation is central to many theories of economic growth. I show using U.S. Census microdata that new firms play a dominant role in the growth of local areas, such as cities and counties. Entry is very persistent at the local level, and variation in this extensive margin accounts for most of...

A growing body of empirical research highlights substantial changes in the US economy during the last three decades. Business dynamism is declining, market power seems to be on the rise, and aggregate productivity growth is sluggish. We show analytically that a decline in the rate of growth of...

Population growth has declined markedly in almost all major economies since the 1970s. We argue this trend has important consequences for the process of firm dynamics and aggregate growth. We study a rich semi-endogenous growth model of firm dynamics, and show analytically that a decline in...

Since 1980, economic growth in the U.S. has been fastest in its largest cities. We show that a group of skill- and information-intensive service industries are responsible for all of this new urban bias in recent growth. We then propose a simple explanation centered around the interaction of...

Since 1980, economic growth in the U.S. has been fastest in its largest cities. We show that a group of skill and information-intensive service industries are responsible for all of this new urban bias in recent growth. We then propose a simple explanation centered around the interaction of...

We present evidence that weak household demand contributed to a reduction in firm and establishment entry in the Great Recession. Motivated by this evidence, we characterize aggregate growth dynamics in response to demand shocks in a broad class of endogenous growth models. We show that the...

Since 1980, US wage growth has been fastest in large cities. Empirically, we show that most of this urban-biased growth reflects wage growth at large Business Services firms, which are also the most intensive users of information and communications technology (ICT) capital in the US economy. We...

We provide a spatial theory of clean growth to assess the global impact of the rise of renewable energy. We model the details of the combined production and transmission network of electricity ("the grid") that determine the supply and losses of energy in space. The local rate of clean energy...