Registration year: 2016 1. Topic: 2. Supervision 3. Presentation

Contrat doctoral
THESIS PROJECT FILE
Registration year: 2016
1. Topic:
Title in English:
“Job creation and company dynamics.
What are the determinants and consequences of the inter-sector and inter-regional reallocation
of companies and business structures?
An analysis for France”
2. Supervision
Benoît MULKAY, Professor of Economics
3. Presentation of thesis project (1 to 2 pages max.)
Companies and business structures are living entities, like human beings. They are born, they grow,
they go into decline and finally die. Like human demographics, it is possible to study the
demographics of companies. But this analogy has its limits. The assets of an organization can be
taken over in part or in full by another. They can be reborn having once disappeared. They can also
change sector, location or other characteristics. Furthermore, organizations often have different
weightings within the economy. They are not of equal importance. This means one can focus on their
size and weight the results based on this, whether measured in terms of production or jobs.
The study of the dynamics of the fabric of local productivity has been ?? in order to better describe
and understand the demographics of businesses producing locally: start-ups, transfers, closures, job
growth and job decline.
First of all, tools must be put in place to quantify business start-ups and closures. This is done by
studying the number of existing businesses and the flow of business in terms of start-ups, takeovers,
transfers or closures. The impact of start-ups and closures is measured in terms of jobs in order to
understand employment dynamics at a local level. Similarly, one can look at the way in which the
reallocation of jobs takes place within a given region in an effort to understand the dynamics of local
productivity.
Businesses are created while others disappear, and some experience growth while
LABEX ENTREPRENDRE – Université Montpellier – Faculté d’Administration Economique et Sociale
Espace Richter ‐ Avenue Raymond Dugrand – CS 59640 ‐ 34960 Montpellier Cedex 2
www.labex‐entreprendre.fr
1
Contrat doctoral
others are in decline, which has consequences for overall employment levels but also for the workers
in the specific businesses concerned. The reallocation of jobs between companies therefore merits
more detailed analysis, taking into account not only business start-ups and closures but also net
variations in employment levels in companies experiencing growth and those in decline. The
proposed thesis will provide various measures of job reallocation and of the impact these jobs have
within or outside a given region or business sector.
Finally, it would be useful to analyse cohorts of businesses in order to monitor company failures over
time, as well as variations in employment levels for each generation. This research will also provide
an analysis of the survival of companies and their growth or decline in order to identify the
trajectories of change that businesses in a given region are likely to follow.
Other questions can be raised in relation to the dynamics of businesses at a local level. It would be
useful to study the mechanisms and determining factors of business creation and of the locations
chosen by companies to establish new premises. One could also look at the locations chosen for the
displacement (transfer) of business from one place to another, which is also important if we are to
understand the inter-regional reallocation of jobs.
These questions have been widely addressed in the English-language literature and in certain
European countries like Italy, but have received relatively little attention in France. These are also
questions which are central to the debate on the economics of entrepreneurship. For this reason, it
would be interesting to apply the existing concepts and methods to French data, especially given that
this data is rich, detailed and now available.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES (mandatory):
BARTELSMAN Eric, John HALTIWANGER et Stefano SCARPETTA (2009) : « Measuring and
Analyzing Cross-country Differences in Firm Dynamics », in Producers Dynamics : New Evidence
from Micro Data, édité par Timothy DUNNE, J. Bradford JENSEN, et Mark J. ROBERTS, NBER
Edition.
DAVIS Steve et John HALTWANGER (1992) : « Gross Job Creation, Gross Job Destruction, and
Employment Reallocation », Quarterly Journal of Economics, 107, 819-863.
DAVIS Steve, John HALTWANGER et Scott SCHUH (1996) : Job Creation and Destruction,
Cambridge : MIT Press.
LABEX ENTREPRENDRE – Université Montpellier – Faculté d’Administration Economique et Sociale
Espace Richter ‐ Avenue Raymond Dugrand – CS 59640 ‐ 34960 Montpellier Cedex 2
www.labex‐entreprendre.fr
2
Contrat doctoral
DAVIS Steve, Jason FABERMAN et John HALTIWANGER (2011) : « Labor Market Flows in
Cross-Section and Over Time », Journal of Monetary Economics, 25.
DUHAUTOIS, Richard (2002) : « Les réallocations d’emplois en France sont-elles en phase avec le
cycle ? », Economie et Statistique, N°351.
DUNNE, Timothy, ROBERTS, Mark J., SAMUELSON, Larry (1988) : « Patterns of Firm Entry and
Exit in U.S. Manufacturing Industries », RAND Journal of Economics, 19(4).
DUNNE, Timothy, ROBERTS, Mark J., SAMUELSON, Larry (1989) : « Plant Turnover and Gross
Employment Flows in the U.S. Manufacturing Sector », Journal of Labor Economics, 7(1).
DUNNE, Timothy, ROBERTS, Mark J., SAMUELSON, Larry (1989) : « The Growth and Failure of
U.S. Manufacturing Plants », Quarterly Journal of Economics, 104(4).
FUJITA Masahisa et Jacques-François THISSE (2002) : Economics of Agglomeration : Cities,
Industrial Location and Regional Growth, Cambridge University Press.
HUIBAN Jean-Pierre, Francis AUBERT et Anne-Marie DUSSOL (2006) : « La démographie des
établissements industriels : une différenciation entre espaces urbains, périurbains et ruraux », Revue
d’Economie Régionale et Urbaine, 2006/5.
JOVANOVIC, Boyan (1982) : « Selection and the Evolution of Industry», Econometrica, 50(3).
LESAGE James et R. Kelley PACE (2009) : Introduction to Spatial Econometrics, CRC Press.
LILIEN, David M. (1982) : « Sectoral Shifts and Cyclical Unemployment», Journal of Political
Economy, 80(4).
SPECIFIC DESIRED SKILLS:
The successful candidate must have good working knowledge of the software program SAS.
Skills in econometrics required (individual data, quality driven variables, panel data methods).
LABEX ENTREPRENDRE – Université Montpellier – Faculté d’Administration Economique et Sociale
Espace Richter ‐ Avenue Raymond Dugrand – CS 59640 ‐ 34960 Montpellier Cedex 2
www.labex‐entreprendre.fr
3
Contrat doctoral
Domain:
Industrial economics
Geographic economics
Statistics and spatial econometrics
Data:
REPER (SIRENE database)
CLAP (Connaissance Locale de l’Appareil Productif)
FICUS / FARE (for accounting data on companies)
These data are available via the Centre d’Accès Sécurisé à Distance (CASD), run by
the Groupes des Ecoles Nationales d’Economie et Statistique (GENES)
4. Thesis financing
100% financed by LabEx over a 3-year period: Axe 2 Programme 1.
LABEX ENTREPRENDRE – Université Montpellier – Faculté d’Administration Economique et Sociale
Espace Richter ‐ Avenue Raymond Dugrand – CS 59640 ‐ 34960 Montpellier Cedex 2
www.labex‐entreprendre.fr
4