Abstract:
Using firm-level panel data from the US Census Bureau and almost fifty other countries, we show that the skewness of the growth rates of employment, sales, and productivity is procyclical. In particular, these distributions display a large left tail of negative growth rates during recessions and a large right tail of positive growth rates during booms. We find similar results at the industry level: industries with falling growth rates see more left-skewed growth rates of firm sales, employment, and productivity. We then build a heterogeneous-agents model in which entrepreneurs face shocks with time-varying skewness that matches the firm-level distributions we document for the United States. Our quantitative results show that a negative shock to the skewness of firms’ productivity growth (keeping the mean and variance constant) generates a persistent drop in output, investment, hiring, and consumption. This suggests the rising risk of large negative firm-level shocks could be an important factor driving recessions.
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