Creative Destruction? Local Business Conditions, Firm Age, and Wages.

While a growing literature has examined the relationship between economic shocks and job creation in startups and established firms, little is known about the quality of these jobs. In this paper, I examine how fluctuations in local business conditions affect the wages of employees at startups and incumbent firms. I identify shocks to local business conditions using plausibly exogenous variation of hurricane strikes in U.S. coastal counties. I find that wages of startup employees increase substantially in response to negative shocks to local business conditions, while there is only a small raise in old firms. This effect does not appear to be driven by changes in supply or demand for labor. These findings are consistent with “cleansing” theories of downturns

Creative Destruction? Local Business Conditions and the Earnings of Employees at Startups.

What drives job quality in startups? In this paper, I examine how fluctuations in local business conditions affect wages in startups and incumbent firms in the retail sector. I identify shocks to local business conditions using plausibly exogenous variation of hurricane strikes in U.S. coastal counties. I find that, on average, wages of startup employees increase in response to negative shocks to local business conditions. This effect does not appear to be driven by changes in supply or demand for labor. These findings are consistent with a “cleansing” effect of downturns, fostering the creation and retainment of more productive jobs, and driving out unproductive ones

Creative Destruction? Local Business Conditions and the Earnings of Employees at Startups.

What drives job quality in startups? In this paper, I examine how fluctuations in local business conditions affect wages in startups and incumbent firms in the retail sector. I identify shocks to local business conditions using plausibly exogenous variation of hurricane strikes in U.S. coastal counties. I find that, on average, wages of startup employees increase in response to negative shocks to local business conditions. This effect does not appear to be driven by changes in supply or demand for labor. These findings are consistent with a “cleansing” effect of downturns, fostering the creation and retainment of more productive jobs, and driving out unproductive ones

Creative Destruction? Local Business Conditions, Firm Age, and Wages.

While a growing literature has examined the relationship between economic shocks and job creation in startups and established firms, little is known about the quality of these jobs. In this paper, I examine how fluctuations in local business conditions affect the wages of employees at startups and incumbent firms. I identify shocks to local business conditions using plausibly exogenous variation of hurricane strikes in U.S. coastal counties. I find that wages of startup employees increase substantially in response to negative shocks to local business conditions, while there is only a small raise in old firms. This effect does not appear to be driven by changes in supply or demand for labor. These findings are consistent with “cleansing” theories of downturns

The signaling value of legal form in debt financing

We examine if a startup's legal form choice is used as a signal by credit providers to infer its risk to default on a loan. We propose that choosing a legal form with low minimum capital requirements signals higher default risk. Arguably, small relationship banks are more likely to use legal form as a screening device when deciding on a loan. Using data from Orbis and the IAB/ZEW Start-up Panel for a sample of German firms, we find evidence consistent with our hypotheses but inconsistent with predictions of several competing explanations, including differential demand for debt or growth opportunities

Viral to metazoan marine plankton nucleotide sequences from the Tara Oceans expedition

A unique collection of oceanic samples was gathered by the Tara Oceans expeditions (2009-2013), targeting plankton organisms ranging from viruses to metazoans, and providing rich environmental context measurements. Thanks to recent advances in the field of genomics, extensive sequencing has been performed for a deep genomic analysis of this huge collection of samples. A strategy based on different approaches, such as metabarcoding, metagenomics, single-cell genomics and metatranscriptomics, has been chosen for analysis of size-fractionated plankton communities. Here, we provide detailed procedures applied for genomic data generation, from nucleic acids extraction to sequence production, and we describe registries of genomics datasets available at the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA, www.ebi.ac.uk/ena). The association of these metadata to the experimental procedures applied for their generation will help the scientific community to access these data and facilitate their analysis. This paper complements other efforts to provide a full description of experiments and open science resources generated from the Tara Oceans project, further extending their value for the study of the world's planktonic ecosystems

The Returns to Entrepreneurship in the Labor Market

The aim of this dissertation is to extend prior work on the private and social returns to entrepreneurship by investigating how and why: (i) a spell of entrepreneurship relates to an individual's future earnings trajectory in the labor market, and (ii) local demand shocks affects job creation through new firm formation. Regarding the first research question, the findings show that in rigid labor markets - like Belgium - former entrepreneurs suffer substantial wage losses in the short- and medium-term after exiting entrepreneurship: five years after they have returned to paid employment, former entrepreneurs earn significantly less than similar employees without an entrepreneurial background. We propose that uncertainty regarding the productivity of ex-entrepreneurs in wage work can explain the initial wage penalty. However, after extensive exploration of various potential explanations for the long-term penalty, we still find a non-negligible part that remains unexplained. We label this the wage persistence puzzle. Regarding the second question, I examine which types of firms in sectors related to rebuilding and recovery create jobs in the periods after a region is hit by a hurricane. I find that startups account for a disproportionate share of job creation. I link these findings to theories of rent-sharing where incumbent workers of established firms capture part of the profits that result from positive demand shocks. Startups, by virtue of being new, do not need to raise wages, which explains their higher responsiveness to local economic shocks in terms of job creation.status: publishe

The long-term consequences of entrepreneurship: Earnings trajectories of former entrepreneurs

Research Summary: Previous literature has documented a large short-term earnings gap for entrepreneurs that return to the wage sector. Using matched employer–employee data from the Belgian Labor Market & Social Protection Database, we document how this initial gap is remarkably persistent. Former entrepreneurs earn 27% less than propensity-scored matched controls 5 years after returning to wage work, which is almost unchanged from the short-term earnings drop. About 60% of this gap results from reductions in hours worked while the remaining 40% is due to reductions in the wage rate. We offer evidence that the decline in hours worked is a choice of former entrepreneurs and therefore reflects a compensating differential, while the decline in the wage rate is a penalty resulting from statistical discrimination by employers. Managerial Summary: While previous work recognizes that entrepreneurs experience reduced earnings when they return to the wage sector, little evidence exists about the long-term consequences of a spell of entrepreneurship. Using detailed administrative data from a large sample of Belgian entrepreneurs and wage employees, we document an earnings gap of about 27% compared with observationally equivalent employees 5 years after returning to wage work. About 60% of this earnings gap results from a reduction in hours worked, and this part appears to be the result of individual choices. The remaining 40% of the earnings gap is due to a decline in the wage rate, and this part appears to be imposed on returning entrepreneurs by employers