The economic downturn of 2007-09 is one of the two largest cyclical downturns experienced in the United States in the post-WWII era — the other being the 1982-83 downturn. This period stands out not just for the magnitude of the downturn but also for the slow pace of the recovery.Using data...

Recent mandates for evidence-based policy choices from both the Executive and Legislative branches of the federal government underscore the importance of understanding the relationship between program participation and outcomes. In this paper, I examine the correlations between participation in...

This paper provides a synthesis of what is known about the determinants of output growth based on studying microeconomic data sets. It starts with a summary of the theoretical explanations which help reconcile heterogeneous performance observed across establishments in the same sector. The...

This paper combines different strands of the productivity literature to investigate the effect of idiosyncratic (firm-level) policy distortions on aggregate outcomes. On the one hand, a growing body of empirical research has been relating cross-country differences in key economic outcomes, such...

In this paper we provide an analysis of the process of creative destruction across 24 countries and 2-digit industries over the past decade. We rely on a newly assembled dataset that draws from different micro data sources (business registers, census, or representative enterprise surveys). The...