How Destructive is Innovation?

Daniel Garcia-Macia, Chang-Tai Hsieh and Pete Klenow

Working Papers from U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies

Abstract: Entrants and incumbents can create new products and displace the products of competitors. Incumbents can also improve their existing products. How much of aggregate productivity growth occurs through each of these channels? Using data from the U.S. Longitudinal Business Database on all non-farm private businesses from 1976�1986 and 2003�2013, we arrive at three main conclusions: First, most growth appears to come from incumbents. We infer this from the modest employment share of entering firms (defined as those less than 5 years old). Second, most growth seems to occur through improvements of existing varieties rather than creation of brand new varieties. Third, own-product improvements by incumbents appear to be more important than creative destruction. We infer this because the distribution of job creation and destruction has thinner tails than implied by a model with a dominant role for creative destruction.

Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2017-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent, nep-gro, nep-ino and nep-sbm
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (53)

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https://www2.census.gov/ces/wp/2017/CES-WP-17-04.pdf First version, 2017 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: How Destructive Is Innovation? (2019)
Working Paper: How Destructive is Innovation? (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cen:wpaper:17-04

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