On the Ubiquity of Declining Business Dynamism

Recent work documents declining business dynamism in establishment data, and points to difficulty in reallocating resources across firms as an important cause. Using import data, we document declining market dynamism that bears a striking resemblance to establishment-level findings and holds for the vast majority of countries and products. Entry rates and the reallocation of market shares fall over time. Young exporters experience rising prices, falling market shares, and reduced skewness in growth rates relative to older exporters. A heterogeneous firm model with additive productivity shocks and growing expenditures, but no reallocation of resources across exporters, can generate all these facts.