Documents Fairlie, Robert W. 6 results

"The large and persistent racial and ethnic disparities found in business ownership and performance contribute to broader economic inequality. Using the latest US Census household microdata and statistical decomposition techniques, I explore several potential barriers to minority business ownership and income. I examine patterns for the four major racial and ethnic groups in the United States: African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, and non-Latino whites. I find that low levels of wealth contribute to why blacks and Latinos have lower business ownership rates, and high levels of wealth increase Asian business ownership rates. Low levels of education contribute to why blacks and Latinos have lower business income, and high levels of education increase Asian business income. Blacks, Latinos, and Asians are relatively young compared to whites, reducing business ownership rates."

"Using NLSY data, the authors estimate the long-term costs of job displacement for young adults. Earnings and wage losses were large for the first three years following displacement. Compared to earnings losses found by other studies for more mature workers, however, earnings losses for these young adults were short-lived, with differences between observed and expected earnings narrowing considerably five years after job loss. At that point, the shortfall in annual earnings (relative to what would have been expected absent job loss) was 9% for men and 12.5% for women, and the shortfall in hourly wages was 21.2% for men. Young workers also apparently differ from more established workers in the composition of total earnings losses: for older workers, total losses largely represent actual, immediate earnings losses, whereas for young workers the loss of opportunities for rapid earnings growth is more important."

"With the growing attention to entrepreneurship as an engine of job creation and economic development, it is important for social scientists who are broadly interested in labor market and employment topics to focus attention on new firms and the policies and practices that surround them. The authors argue that the next generation of scholarship should pay particular attention to labor market institutions, the ecosystem of existing employers, and the human resource management practices that provide the strategic context for entrepreneurs and shape the career opportunities for workers. Remarkable variation occurs across space and time in the prevalence and performance of entrepreneurs. There are also many open questions as to the antecedents and consequences of entrepreneurship, for entrepreneurs, their communities, and their employees. The availability of new administrative data across many countries will allow for comparative cross-national studies and will provide opportunities to bring qualitative and mixed-method approaches to entrepreneurial labor market studies. This introduction and the articles in this special issue offer a path forward."

"The field of entrepreneurship is growing rapidly and expanding into new areas. This article presents a new compilation of administrative panel data on the universe of business start-ups in the United States, which will be useful for future research in entrepreneurship. To create the US start-up panel data set, the authors link the universe of non-employer firms to the universe of employer firms in the Longitudinal Business Database (LBD). Start-up cohorts of more than five million new businesses per year, which create roughly three million jobs, can be tracked over time. To illustrate the potential of the new start-up panel data set for future research, the authors provide descriptive statistics for a few examples of research topics using a representative start-up cohort."