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Changing Business Dynamism: Volatility of Shocks vs. Responsiveness to Shocks?

The pace of business dynamism as measured by indicators such as job reallocation has declined in the U.S. in recent decades, but this decline has not been monotonic for all sectors. For the High Tech sector, business dynamism as measured by the pace of job reallocation rose through the 1990s but then declined sharply in the post-2000 period. This is in contrast with the Retail Trade sector, which exhibited a sharp decline in dynamism in the 1990s. In this paper we ask whether the observed patterns in the High Tech sector reflect changes in the volatility of idiosyncratic TFP shocks or rather the response of businesses to those shocks. We focus on the High Tech sector since it is an important sector for innovation and productivity growth. Using plant-level data from the High Tech U.S. manufacturing sector, we document rising dispersion in idiosyncratic TFP shocks across plants and little change in the persistence of such shocks. This suggests the patterns of rising and then declining reallocation are not being driven by changes in the volatility of shocks. Instead, we find changes in the marginal effects of idiosyncratic plant-level productivity shocks on growth and survival that mimic the patterns of reallocation in the High Tech sector. During the 1990s, the responsiveness of growth and survival increased in the High Tech sector for young businesses. In contrast, during the 2000s responsiveness declined because of accelerating decline in the responsiveness of both young and mature businesses. These changes in the responsiveness yield substantial changes in the contribution of reallocation to aggregate (industry-level) productivity growth. During the 1990s, the increased responsiveness yields an increase in the contribution of reallocation to productivity growth of as much as half a log point per year. During the post-2000 period, responsiveness declines in an accelerated fashion implying as much as a two log point per year reduction in the contribution of reallocation to industry-level productivity growth.