Homepage
Chinese mass imports strengthen extreme parties Globalisation has led to an increase in votes for the political fringes...
See page
IWH Bankruptcy Research
IWH Bankruptcy Research The Bankruptcy Research Unit of the Halle Institute for...
See page
East Germany
The Nasty Gap 30 years after unification: Why East Germany is still 20% poorer than the...
See page
IWH EXplore
IWH EXplore Competitive Funding for Research Projects with External Involvement at...
See page
01.06.2022 • 12/2022
IWH welcomes top international researcher as head of new department
A powerful boost for the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH): Merih Sevilir, a world-renowned researcher on the interplay of financial and labour markets, is heading the Institute’s newest department as of today. Her expertise strengthens the unique selling points of the institute and can be expected to generate significant opportunities for policy insights.
Read press release
Introduction to "Measuring and Accounting for Innovation in the Twenty-First Century"
Javier Miranda
Measuring and Accounting for Innovation in the Twenty-First Century,
NBER Studies in Income and Wealth, Vol 78 /
2021
Abstract
Measuring innovation is challenging both for researchers and for national statisticians, and it is increasingly important in light of the ongoing digital revolution. National accounts and many other economic statistics were designed before the emergence of the digital economy and the growing importance of intangible capital. They do not yet fully capture the wide range of innovative activity that is observed in modern economies. This volume examines how to measure innovation, track its effects on economic activity and prices, and understand how it has changed the structure of production processes, labor markets, and organizational form and operation in business. The contributors explore new approaches to, and data sources for, measurement—such as collecting data for a particular innovation as opposed to a firm, and the use of trademarks for tracking innovation. They also consider the connections between university-based R&D and business startups, and the potential impacts of innovation on income distribution. The research suggests potential strategies for expanding current measurement frameworks to better capture innovative activity, such as more detailed tracking of global value chains to identify innovation across time and space, and expanding the measurement of the GDP impacts of innovation in fields such as consumer content delivery and cloud computing.
Read article
Measuring and Accounting for Innovation in the Twenty-First Century
Carol Corrado, Jonathan Haskel, Javier Miranda, Daniel Sichel
NBER Studies in Income and Wealth,
2021
Abstract
Measuring innovation is challenging both for researchers and for national statisticians, and it is increasingly important in light of the ongoing digital revolution. National accounts and many other economic statistics were designed before the emergence of the digital economy and the growing importance of intangible capital. They do not yet fully capture the wide range of innovative activity that is observed in modern economies.
This volume examines how to measure innovation, track its effects on economic activity and prices, and understand how it has changed the structure of production processes, labor markets, and organizational form and operation in business. The contributors explore new approaches to, and data sources for, measurement—such as collecting data for a particular innovation as opposed to a firm, and the use of trademarks for tracking innovation. They also consider the connections between university-based R&D and business startups, and the potential impacts of innovation on income distribution.
The research suggests potential strategies for expanding current measurement frameworks to better capture innovative activity, such as more detailed tracking of global value chains to identify innovation across time and space, and expanding the measurement of the GDP impacts of innovation in fields such as consumer content delivery and cloud computing.
Read article
Measuring Job Creation, Growth, and Survival among the Universe of Start-ups in the United States Using a Combined Start-up Panel Data Set
Robert W. Fairlie, Javier Miranda, Nikolas Zolas
ILR Review,
No. 5,
2019
Abstract
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.
Read article
Taking the Leap: The Determinants of Entrepreneurs Hiring Their First Employee
Robert W. Fairlie, Javier Miranda
Journal of Economics and Management Strategy,
No. 1,
2017
Abstract
Job creation is one of the most important aspects of entrepreneurship, but we know relatively little about the hiring patterns and decisions of start‐ups. Longitudinal data from the Integrated Longitudinal Business Database (iLBD), Kauffman Firm Survey (KFS), and the Growing America through Entrepreneurship (GATE) experiment are used to provide some of the first evidence in the literature on the determinants of taking the leap from a nonemployer to employer firm among start‐ups. Several interesting patterns emerge regarding the dynamics of nonemployer start‐ups hiring their first employee. Hiring rates among the universe of nonemployer start‐ups are very low, but increase when the population of nonemployers is focused on more growth‐oriented businesses such as incorporated and employer identification number businesses. If nonemployer start‐ups hire, the bulk of hiring occurs in the first few years of existence. After this point in time, relatively few nonemployer start‐ups hire an employee. Focusing on more growth‐ and employment‐oriented start‐ups in the KFS, we find that Asian‐owned and Hispanic‐owned start‐ups have higher rates of hiring their first employee than white‐owned start‐ups. Female‐owned start‐ups are roughly 10 percentage points less likely to hire their first employee by the first, second, and seventh years after start‐up. The education level of the owner, however, is not found to be associated with the probability of hiring an employee. Among business characteristics, we find evidence that business assets and intellectual property are associated with hiring the first employee. Using data from the largest random experiment providing entrepreneurship training in the United States ever conducted, we do not find evidence that entrepreneurship training increases the likelihood that nonemployers hire their first employee.
Read article
Parent Universities and the Location of Academic Startups
S. Heblich, Viktor Slavtchev
Small Business Economics,
No. 1,
2014
Abstract
Academic startups are thought to locate in their parent university’s home region because geographic proximity to a university facilitates access to academic knowledge and resources. In this paper we analyze the importance of a different channel, namely social ties between academic entrepreneurs and university researchers, for the access to academic knowledge and resources, and therefore for the location of the startups. We employ unique data on academic startups from regions with more than one university and find that only the parent university influences academic entrepreneurs’ decisions to stay in the region while other universities in the same region play no role. Our findings suggest that geographic proximity to a university may not per se guarantee access to knowledge and resources; social contacts are additionally required. The importance of social ties implies that academic knowledge and resources are not necessarily local public goods. This holds implications for universities’ role in stimulating regional development.
Read article