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Resilience After Climate Shocks: Evidence From SBA Disaster Loans
September 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-58
We show that natural disasters generate persistent declines in U.S. county employment and net job creation. We then examine whether emergency credit can mitigate these effects. Linking the universe of SBA disaster-loan applications to Census Bureau records, we exploit a credit-score screening rule introduced in 2016 and implement a fuzzy regression discontinuity design around the score cutoff. Firms just above the threshold are substantially more likely to receive government-backed loans, and approval increases employment relative to declined applicants, with effects persisting over subsequent years. The adjustment operates primarily through lower job destruction, while reduced firm exit and stronger job creation also contribute. Overall, SBA lending preserved an estimated 9.8% of the jobs that would otherwise have been lost in disaster-affected counties.
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Cleansing Floods? Creative Destruction and Government Spending After Disasters
August 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-52
Disasters devastate economies, yet productivity can improve in their wake. Why? Using confidential plant-level microdata from the US Census Bureau and an event study design, I trace the creative destruction process that follows large federally declared floods. Exits are concentrated among the least productive plants, whose used machines are then acquired by high-productivity entrants. Survivors upgrade their machinery as they rebuild and see productivity gains. Federal disaster spending facilitates this process by expanding financing access for nimble young and small firms that disproportionately fuel productive reallocation. Without it, financing constraints stifle creative destruction and productivity declines. Ultimately, the relative income gains from federal disaster assistance generate tax revenues far exceeding the policy's upfront cost, making it both efficiency-enhancing and fiscally sound. My findings reveal a novel allocative efficiency channel through which government spending supports post-disaster recovery, with critical implications for a warming world.
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What Happens to Contractors After States Ban Affirmative Action?
July 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-41
Using restricted Census business records, I explore how banning affirmative action in state contracting affects minority- and women-owned business enterprises (MWBEs). I find that ending affirmative action led MWBE contractors to gradually downsize, with the most pronounced reductions in force experienced by Black-owned businesses and larger MWBEs. Despite these workforce changes, existing MWBEs were no more likely to shut down than other businesses. New MWBEs were relatively less common after a state's ban, highlighting how bans can shift the demographic composition of new contractors. A calibrated model suggests bans are equivalent to considerable reductions in MWBE productivity and scrap values.
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Startup Dynamics: Transitioning from Nonemployer Firms to Employer Firms, Survival, and Job Creation
April 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-26
Understanding the dynamics of startup businesses' growth, exit, and survival is crucial for fostering entrepreneurship. Among the nearly 30 million registered businesses in the United States, fewer than six million have employees beyond the business owners. This research addresses the gap in understanding which companies transition to employer businesses and the mechanisms behind this process. Job creation remains a critical concern for policymakers, researchers, and advocacy groups. This study aims to illuminate the transition from non-employer businesses to employer businesses and explore job creation by new startups. Leveraging newly available microdata from the U.S. Census Bureau, we seek to gain deeper insights into firm survival, job creation by startups, and the transition from non-employer to employer status.
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Place Based Economic Development and Tribal Casinos
April 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-24
Tribal lands in the U.S. have historically experienced some of the worst economic conditions in the nation. We review some existing research on the effect of American Indian tribal casinos on various measures of local economic development. This is an industry that began in the early 1990s and currently generates more than $40 billion annually. We also review the state of the literature on the effects of casino operations on communities in or adjacent to tribal areas. Using a new dataset linking individual and enterprise-level data longitudinally, this study examines the industry- and location-specific impacts of tribal casino operations. We focus in particular on the employment of American Indians. We document positive flows from unemployment and non-casino geographies to work in sectors related to casino operations. Tribal casinos differ from other standard place-based economic development projects in that they are focused on a single industry; we discuss these differences and note that some of the positive spillover effects may be similar to other, more standard place-based policies. Finally, we discuss additional and open-ended questions for future research on this topic.
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U.S. Banks' Artificial Intelligence and Small Business Lending: Evidence from the Census Bureau's Annual Business Survey
February 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-07
Utilizing confidential microdata from the Census Bureau's new technology survey (technology module of the Annual Business Survey), we shed light on U.S. banks' use of artificial intelligence (AI) and its effect on their small business lending. We find that the percentage of banks using AI increases from 14% in 2017 to 43% in 2019. Linking banks' AI use to their small business lending, we find that banks with greater AI usage lend significantly more to distant borrowers, about whom they have less soft information. Using an instrumental variable based on banks' proximity to AI vendors, we show that AI's effect is likely causal. In contrast, we do not find similar effects for cloud systems, other types of software, or hardware surveyed by Census, highlighting AI's uniqueness. Moreover, AI's effect on distant lending is more pronounced in poorer areas and areas with less bank presence. Last, we find that banks with greater AI usage experience lower default rates among distant borrowers and charge these borrowers lower interest rates, suggesting that AI helps banks identify creditworthy borrowers at loan origination. Overall, our evidence suggests that AI helps banks reduce information asymmetry with borrowers, thereby enabling them to extend credit over greater distances.
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Measuring the Business Dynamics of Firms that Received Pandemic Relief Funding: Findings from a New Experimental BDS Data Product
January 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-05
This paper describes a new experimental data product from the U.S. Census Bureau's Center for Economic Studies: the Business Dynamics Statistics (BDS) of firms that received Small Business Administration (SBA) pandemic funding. This new product, BDS-SBA COVID, expands the set of currently published BDS tables by linking loan-level program participation data from SBA to internal business microdata at the U.S. Census Bureau. The linked programs include the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), COVID Economic Injury Disaster Loans (COVID-EIDL), the Restaurant Revitalization Fund (RRF), and Shuttered Venue Operators Grants (SVOG). Using these linked data, we tabulate annual firm and establishment counts, measures of job creation and destruction, and establishment entry and exit for recipients and non-recipients of program funds in 2020-2021. We further stratify the tables by timing of loan receipt and loan size, and business characteristics including geography, industry sector, firm size, and firm age. We find that for the youngest firms that received PPP, the timing of receipt mattered. Receiving an early loan correlated with a lower job destruction rate compared to non-recipients and businesses that received a later loan. For the smallest firms, simply participating in PPP was associated with lower employment loss. The timing of PPP receipt was also related to establishment exit rates. For businesses of nearly all ages, those that received an early loan exited at a lower rate in 2022 than later loan recipients.
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Investigating the Effect of Innovation Activities of Firms on Innovation Performance: Does Firm Size Matter?
January 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-04
Understanding the relationship between a firm's innovation activities and its performance has been of great interest to management scholars. While the literature on innovation activities is vast, there is a dearth of studies investigating the effect of key innovation activities of the firm on innovation outcomes in a single study, and whether their effects are dependent on the nature of firms, specifically firm size. Drawing from a longitudinal dataset from the Business Research & Development and Innovation Survey (BRDIS), and informed by contingency theory and resource orchestration theory, we examine the relationship between a firm's innovation activities - including its Research & Development (R&D) investment, securing patents, collaborative R&D, R&D toward new business areas, and grants for R&D - and its product innovation and process innovation. We also investigate whether these relationships are contingent on firm size. Consistent with contingency theory, we find a significant difference between large firms and small firms regarding how they enhance product innovation and process innovation. Large firms can improve product innovation by securing patents through applications and issuances, coupled with active participation in collaborative R&D efforts. Conversely, smaller firms concentrate their efforts on the number of patents applied for, directing R&D efforts toward new business areas, and often leveraging grants for R&D efforts. To achieve process innovation, a similar dichotomy emerges. Larger firms demonstrate a commitment to securing patents, engage in R&D efforts tailored to new business areas, and actively collaborate with external entities on R&D efforts. In contrast, smaller firms primarily focus on securing patents and channel their R&D efforts toward new business pursuits. This nuanced exploration highlights the varied strategies employed by large and small firms in navigating the intricate landscape of both product and process innovation. The results shed light on specific innovation activities as antecedents of innovation outcomes and demonstrate how the effectiveness of such assets is contingent upon firm size.
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How Big is Small? The Economic Effects of Access to Small Business Subsidies
June 2024
Working Paper Number:
CES-24-28
Industry size standards that determine eligibility for small business subsidies have vastly increased
over the past decade. We exploit quasi-random variation in the implementation of size standard
increases to study the effects on small firms, subsidy allocation, and industry outcomes using
Census Bureau microdata. Following size standard increases, revenues decline for an industry's
smallest firms, and they are less likely to survive. We link these effects to a reallocation of
government procurement contracts from smaller to larger firms. Consequently, industries become
more concentrated and growth declines. These findings highlight the broad economic effects of
changing eligibility for small business subsidies.
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After the Storm: How Emergency Liquidity Helps Small Businesses Following Natural Disasters
April 2024
Working Paper Number:
CES-24-20
Does emergency credit prevent long-term financial distress? We study the causal effects of government-provided recovery loans to small businesses following natural disasters. The rapid financial injection might enable viable firms to survive and grow or might hobble precarious firms with more risk and interest obligations. We show that the loans reduce exit and bankruptcy, increase employment and revenue, unlock private credit, and reduce delinquency. These effects, especially the crowding-in of private credit, appear to reflect resolving uncertainty about repair. We do not find capital reallocation away from neighboring firms and see some evidence of positive spillovers on local entry.
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