Previous estimates indicate that COVID-19 led to a large drop in the number of operating businesses operating early in the pandemic, but surprisingly little is known on whether these shutdowns turned into permanent closures and whether small businesses were disproportionately hit. This paper...

We estimate the effect of college education on business survival using the NLSY79. The endogeneity of both education and business ownership is accounted for by a competing risks duration model augmented with a college selection equation. Contrary to the previous literature, we find no effect of...

Never in the past 30 years has productivity growth been lower than since the 2008 global financial crisis, and never has income inequality been higher than it is today in Japan, and in the OECD area. The two challenges have some common origins, including a widening productivity and wage gap...

We examine how consumer credit access impacts self-employment and small business ownership by building a new dataset that links 3 million individual earnings and credit reports to pass-through tax records. We show that self-employment and employer business ownership increase with personal credit...

This paper assesses the prospects of a 2021 time bomb in small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) failures triggered by the generous support policies enacted during the 2020 COVID-19 crisis. Policies implemented in 2020, on their own, do not create a 2021 time bomb for SMEs. Rather, business...

With sound framework conditions, fine universities, good infrastructure and policies friendly towards foreign direct investment, Ireland scores high in international innovation scoreboards. Overall, policies to boost innovation and entrepreneurship are on the right track, but investment in...