 Where has the Belgian Business Dynamism gone?Gert Bijnens and Jozef Konings No 627700, Working Papers of Department of Economics, Leuven from KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), Department of Economics, Leuven Abstract: We build on Decker et al. (2016) who show that business dynamism and entrepreneurship in the U.S. have declined over recent decades and that the characteristics of this decline changed around 2000. Since 2000 the U.S. decline in dynamism has been accompanied by a decline in high-growth, young firms. Using 30 years of data from all Belgian private firms, we now offer evidence that Belgium, a far more rigid economy than the U.S., experienced a similar decline in dynamism. Furthermore, the decline set in around 2000 as well. We attribute this not only to the declining share of young firms to become high-growth firms, but more importantly also to the declining propensity for small firms to experience fast growth. We do not yet know what caused this decline. Since there are remarkable similarities between Belgium and the U.S. with respect to the secular decline in business dynamism, global trends rather than country specific changes are most likely to be at the basis of this evolution. Pages: 44 Forthcoming in FEB Research Report VIVES 2018.59 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ete:ceswps:627700 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Working Papers of Department of Economics, Leuven from KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), Department of Economics, Leuven |
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