Financing, Ownership, and Performance: A Novel, Longitudinal Firm-Level Database
December 2024
Working Paper Number:
CES-24-73
Abstract
The Census Bureau's Longitudinal Business Database (LBD) underpins many studies of firm-level behavior. It tracks longitudinally all employers in the nonfarm private sector but lacks information about business financing and owner characteristics. We address this shortcoming by linking LBD observations to firm-level data drawn from several large Census Bureau surveys. The resulting Longitudinal Employer, Owner, and Financing (LEOF) database contains more than 3 million observations at the firm-year level with information about start-up financing, current financing, owner demographics, ownership structure, profitability, and owner aspirations ' all linked to annual firm-level employment data since the firm hired its first employee. Using the LEOF database, we document trends in owner demographics and financing patterns and investigate how these business characteristics relate to firm-level employment outcomes.
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:
company,
disclosure,
agency,
corporation,
employee,
acquisition,
financial,
entrepreneur,
entrepreneurship,
finance,
investor,
financing,
longitudinal,
recession,
younger firms,
employment data,
loan,
security,
firms employment,
firms age,
longitudinal employer
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American Economic Association,
Characteristics of Business Owners,
Bureau of Labor Statistics,
Center for Economic Studies,
Securities and Exchange Commission,
Census Bureau Longitudinal Business Database,
Longitudinal Business Database,
Brookings Institution,
Employer Identification Numbers,
Department of Homeland Security,
American Community Survey,
Census Bureau Disclosure Review Board,
Survey of Business Owners,
Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation,
Business Dynamics Statistics,
Annual Survey of Entrepreneurs,
National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics,
Annual Business Survey,
Data Management System
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