The authors investigate the empirical link between prevailing levels of crime and the viability of small businesses. Using confidential microdata from the U.S. Census Bureau's Characteristics of Business Owners Survey, they find, on balance, that young firms operating in high-crime niches in...

High prevailing levels of criminal activity have numerous impacts on the viability of urban small businesses and the various impacts are not uniformly negative. It is the negative impacts, however, that are most often noted. Either the perception or reality of rampant crime can scare away...

This study empirically investigates Michael Porter’s hypothesis that urban minority neighborhoods offer attractive opportunities to household-oriented businesses, such as retail firms (1995). Our analysis compares the traits and performance of firms serving predominantly minority clients to...

Limited access to financing restricts the ability of minority business enterprises (MBEs) to achieve viability, to generate new jobs, and, generally, to reach their full potential to contribute to the economic development of the communities and regions in which they operate. Although MBEs rely...

This paper uses the new Longitudinal Establishment and Enterprise Microdata (LEEM) at CES to investigate gross and net job flows for the U.S. economy. Much of the previous work on U.S. job flows has been based on analysis of the Longitudinal Research Database (LRD), which is limited to...

Differences in financing patterns and financial characteristics between female- and male-owned firms are often attributed to imperfections in credit markets. However, these differences could arise for many reasons, such as differences in the characteristics and preferences of owners and firms....

Although entrepreneurial activity is an important part of a capitalist economy, data about U.S. businesses in their early years of operation have been extremely limited. As part of an effort to gather more data on new businesses in the United States, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation (the...

The Kauffman Firm Survey is a panel study of 4,928 businesses founded in 2004 that are being tracked annually over their first eight years. The survey focuses on the nature of new business formation activity, characteristics of the strategy, offerings, and employment patterns of new businesses....