Declining Business Dynamism in Belgium

Gert Bijnens and Jozef Konings

No 20181, Working Papers from University of Liverpool, Department of Economics

Abstract: Using 30 years of data from all for-profit firms incorporated in Belgium, we show that business dynamism and entrepreneurship have been declining over recent decades. This decline set in around the year 2000 following a decade of declining start-up rates. We also observe a decreasing share of young firms that become high-growth firms and more importantly a declining propensity for small (not necessarily young) firms to experience fast growth. Interestingly, a similar decline in business dynamism occurred in the U.S., where firms face a far less rigid institutional environment than in Belgium. These remarkable similarities suggest that global trends rather than country specific changes are at the basis of this evolution. We show evidence that points to the role of ICT intensity and in explaining the secular decline in business dynamism.

Keywords: business dynamism; firm dynamics; firm growth; entry; reallocation; high-growth firms; high-impact firms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D21 E24 J6 L25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 53 pages
Date: 2018-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-cse, nep-ict, nep-ino, nep-mac and nep-sbm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Forthcoming

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/media/livacuk/schoolof ... amism-in-Belgium.pdf First version, 2018 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Declining business dynamism in Belgium (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:liv:livedp:20181

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of Liverpool, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Rachel Slater ().