初创科技公司繁荣度和行业法规关系报告

1、ContentsExecutive Summary / i Introduction / 1Literature Review and Theory / 4 Data / 8Variables and Empirical Strategy / 15 Results / 16Discussion and Implications / 22 Conclusion / 26Appendix A / 27 References / 28About the authors / 32 Acknowledgments / 32 Publishing information / 33Supporting th

2、e Fraser Institute / 34 Purpose, funding, and independence / 34 About the Fraser Institute / 35Editorial Advisory Board / 36Executive SummaryEntrepreneurship has long been studied as an important determinant for the long-term health and growth of an economy. Many studies highlight how higher levels

3、of government regulation can impede business activity, firm entry, and entrepreneurship. Others have shown that regulation can affect small businesses to a greater extent than medium and large businesses.The extensive research on the relationship between regulation and entrepreneurship has yet to ex

4、amine the relationship between regulation and young, high-growth technology startups.Technology startups and technology entrepreneurs are at the heart of innovation. These companies are unique in that they do not fit neatly into the traditional categories of small businesses (or small- and medium- s

5、ized enterprises) or large and established companies. Many technology startups are young and fast-growing and thus of interest for their potential impact on job creation. Studies have found that high-growth businesses (which are disproportionally young firms) account for almost 50 percent of job cre

6、ation in the United States.The relationship between regulation and technology startups may also be different than that between regulation and a typical small or large business. This is because technology startups that grow quickly andbecome “large” are often market disruptors or emerge from undefine

7、d, un- clear, or regulatory gray areas. Some technology startups have even been described as engaging in “regulatory entrepreneurship” because they are involved in changing regulations by mobilizing their consumer base, and they operate despite industry-specific regulations.This study provides a fir

8、st look at the relationship between regu- lation and technology startups in the United States and in Canada. It examines whether more regulated industries tend to be associated with fewer startup entries and more startup deaths. The industries studied are: pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing;

9、ambulatory health care ser- vices; software publishing industries; data processing, hosting, and related services; information services; credit intermediation and related activities; securities, commodity contracts, and other investments; and insurance carriers and related activities.This study incl

10、udes 16,672 active and 2,913 closed technology star- tups in the United States and Canada that were founded between January2012 and June 2019. Of the total 19,585 startups, 14,834 are headquartered in the United States and 4,751 in Canada.The results suggest that more regulated industries may exhibi

11、t lower rates of entry and that more regulated industries are associated with a greater likelihood of a startup closing. These results are stronger for the United States than for Canada. This may be because the study includes more US-based than Canadian-based startups. It may also be that the regula

12、tory and/or market environments differ in the US and Canada such that the impact of regulation differs. For instance, the Canadian regula- tions may be less relevant for Canadian-based startups if the goal is to expand to the relatively larger US market.Why would more regulation lead to more startup

13、s closing? Several studies have found that factors such as higher costs of regulatory compli- ance burden small companies more than larger and incumbent companies. While compliance cost is one important avenue affecting startup closings, another potential avenue is the availability of investor fundi

14、ng.Angel investors (typically early investors of a startup) and institu- tional investors such as venture capitalists provide funding for technology startups in exchange for equity in the startup. Venture capitalists are es- pecially important once a startup has established its concept and is ready

15、for the growth stage. Venture capitalists invest in startups with the intent of getting significant returns in a short time. More specifically, the goal of venture funds is to achieve returns in the order of 20 percent or more per year within a 10-year period. Because of this, they are seeking to fi

16、nance companies that have shorter time horizons and greater capital efficiency. Since heavier regulations add a layer of bureaucracy, increase capital re- quirements, and lengthen the time horizon of investment returns, startups in more regulated industries could attract less venture capital funding

17、.This study discusses this avenue and points to some preliminary evidence suggesting that some venture capital investors are deterred from investing in startups in more regulated industries.IntroductionEntrepreneurship has long been studied as an important determinant for long-run economic growth. A

18、s such, scholars follow various measures of entrepreneurial activity and analyze cross-country differences and trends in entrepreneurial activity over time. Much of this research is also directed toward understanding how to encourage and spur entrepreneurship and determining what conditions can burd

19、en entrepreneurs. The institutional environment has been identified as having an impact on the extent of pro- ductive entrepreneurial activity (Baumol, 1990; Boettke and Coyne, 2009; Landes, Mokyr, and Baumol, 2012).More specifically, the regulation of business activity and entry has been on the for

20、efront of this research, and empirical studies indicate that higher levels of regulations impede business activity, firm entry, andentrepreneurship (Klapper, Laeven, and Rajan, 2006; Nystrm, 2008; Bripi, 2013; Lima et al., 2014; Bransetter et al., 2014). These research papers have focused on aggrega

21、te “business entry” or entrepreneurshipoften equat- ing all small- and medium-sized businesses, large established businesses, and “high-growth” technology startups in the same category. While subse- quent research has demonstrated the differential impact of regulation on small businesses (see Calcag

22、no and Sobel, 2013; Bailey and Thomas, 2017; Chambers, 2018), there has been little research examining the relationship between regulation and young, high-growth technology startups. We fill this gap by studying that relationship.Technology startups are unique in that they neither fit neatly into th

23、e traditional categorizations of small businesses (or small- and medium- sized enterprises) or into large and established companies. They are simi- lar to traditional small businesses because they tend to be “small” in size, but they differ in many other waysmost importantly, technology startups ten

24、d to be high growth and innovation focused, and remain small forless than 10 years. On the other hand, “small businesses” tend to remain small for most of their existence and are not innovation or growth focused (Hurst and Pugsley, 2011). These small businesses are often referred to as “mom-and-pop

25、shops” or “Main Street” entrepreneurs. The experience of with regulation is also different for startups and traditional small busi-nesses. For example, specific labour regulations may have a greater impact on small businesses than on technology startups because of the greater use of low-skilled labo

26、ur in the former. Furthermore, the incentives to comply with existing regulations may be lower for young technology startups than for a typical Main Street small business (Palagashvili, 2020).Technology startups that grow fast and become “large” are often market disruptors or come about from undefin

27、ed, unclear, or regula- tory gray areas. Some technology startups have even been described as engaging in “regulatory entrepreneurship” because they are involved in changing regulations by mobilizing their consumer base and they oper- ate despite industry-specific regulations (Pollman and Barry, 201

28、7; Tusk, 2018). Venture capital funding has contributed to this with the mindset that with enough resources to mobilize the consumer bases, regulations can be altered to allow technology companies to enter and operate invarious industries. The experience of startups with regulation may thus be diffe

29、rent than that of small and large companies.Many technology startups are young and fast-growing, and thus of interest for their potential impact on job creation. Decker et al. (2014) find that high-growth businesses (which are disproportionally young firms) account for almost 50 percent of job creat

30、ion. Their research describes the unique role of young and fast-growing startups: Most new businesses tend to die within 10 years, and most surviving young businesses do not grow but remain small (these may be the typical Main Street or mom-and-pop businesses)but a small portion of young businesses

31、exhibit very high growth and contribute substantially to job creation (Decker et al., 2014).Other studies also indicate that almost all net job creation in the US has occurred in firms younger than five years old, and these are from a very small percentage of high-growth firms (Stangler and Litan, 2

32、009; Stangler and Kedrosky, 2010).This paper examines the relationship between industry-specific regulations and startup birth rates (entry) and startup deaths (i.e., closings)1 in the United States and Canada from 2012 to 2019. We use theMercatus Centers RegData dataset to capture the intensity of

33、national- level regulations across industries in the United States and Canada. Our preliminary evidence suggests that more regulated industries may exhibit lower rates of entry and that more regulated industries are associated with a greater likelihood that a startup will close. These findings seem

34、more robust for the US than for Canada.Existing studies have outlined several mechanisms through which regulations may cause a greater burden on companies, especially small1 Startup closings and exits only measure startups shutting down (i.e., failing), not startup exits due to mergers or acquisitio

35、ns (M&A).companies, including such important factors as high fixed costs of entry or high compliance costs. We suggest another potential mechanism relevant for technology startups: startup venture capital funding. Startup funding may be a key variable for technology startup closings because a lack o

36、f funding (or “running out of money”) is often cited as one of the main rea- sons why startups fail (CB Insights, 2019). Since regulations can add layers of bureaucracy, increase capital requirements, and lengthen the time hori- zon for investment returns, startups in more regulated industries could

37、 attract less venture capital funding than those in less regulated industries.The next section discusses the literature and theoretical predictions. A data description and an outline of the empirical strategy follow. We then present the main findings and discuss the results and funding as a poten- t

38、ial mechanism. The final section concludes.Literature Review and TheoryRegulation and EntrepreneurshipEconomics research has empirically examined the relationship between regulation and entrepreneurship. Djankov et al. (2002) provide some of the most comprehensive data examining the extent of regula

39、tion of business entry in each country, and Klapper et al. (2006) use this data to investi- gate how stricter regulations of entry have affected European businesses. Klapper et al. (2006) find a negative relationship between regulation and the entry of new businesses in Europe, and that more regulat

40、ory proced- ures resulted in fewer new businesses. Similarly, Branstetter et al. (2013) find that a reform in Portugal that reduced the cost of firm entry led toan increase in new firm formation and employment. Their analysis used matched employer-employee data that provided additional characteristi

41、cs of founders and employees of associated firms, and thus they also discov- ered that the increase in new firm formation occurred mostly among the “marginal firms”ones they described as small firms owned by less edu- cated entrepreneurs that operated in low-technology sectors. Bripi (2016) studies

42、the impact of a regulatory reform that reduced the administrative burden for business startups across provinces and industries in Italy. The results indicate that lengthier and costlier regulatory procedures reduced business entry rates. Crews (2018) provides an extensive overview of the empirical l

43、iterature on the relationship between regulation and startup activity.Using data on economic freedom by country from the Fraser Insti- tutes Economic Freedom of the World Index, Nystrm (2008) finds that less regulation of credit, labour, and business tends to increase entrepre- neurship, as measured

44、 by self-employment. However, using the same data on economic freedom, Bjrnskov and Foss (2008) fail to show that regula- tion is significantly correlated with entrepreneurship, as measured by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. It is possible that the different measures of entrepreneurship may be

45、capturing different concepts, and hence lead-4 /ing to different results. There is also considerable literature on the relation- ship between capital gains tax and startup activityMitchell et al. (2018) provide an overview of this research and conclude that there is substantial evidence indicating t

46、hat higher capital gains tax rates deter business star- tup activity.Overall, these empirical studies indicate that regulations matter for entrepreneurial activity, and that greater regulation may deter entre- preneurship and business entry. Bailey and Thomas (2017) point out thatmost of the above-m

47、entioned studies of regulatory burden or institutional quality are country-specific while regulation tends to be industry-specific. To address this problem, they examine the impact of industry-specific regulation on entrepreneurship and business entry. They use a novel dataset, Mercatus Centers RegD

48、ata, to examine how the variation in the intensity of federal regulations by industry affects business entry, business exits, and employment in the United States. They find that industries that are more regulated experienced fewer new firm births and slower employ- ment growth from 1998 to 2011. The

49、y also find that regulations inhibit employment growth in all firms and that large firms are less likely than small firms to leave a heavily regulated industry. Goldschlag and Tabbarok (2018) also use RegData, but find that federal regulations had little impact on the United States declining busines

50、s dynamism over the last 30 years. Thus, they failed to find a relationship (positive or negative) showing that more regulated industries experienced a greater decline in business dyna- mism than less regulated industries.Other empirical studies in regulation and entrepreneurship examinehow regulati

51、ons may affect different types of businesses. Calcagno and Sobel (2013) find that regulations seem to operate as a “fixed cost” that results in larger firm sizes and hurts precisely the smallest firmsthus indicating that the cost of compliance presents a greater burden for small firms than large one

52、s. Using Mercatuss RegData, Chambers et al. (2018) find that regulatory growth disproportionally burdens small businesses relative to large businesswhere a 10 percent growth in regulatory re- strictions is associated with a reduction in the total number of small firms within that industry but has no

53、 statistically significant association with the number of large firms in that industry. Crain and Crain (2014) measure the cost of regulatory compliance for different industries, and find that, across all industries, the compliance cost per employee is greatest among small businesses and lowest amon

54、g large businesses.6 / Technology Startups and Industry-Specific RegulationsRegulation and technology startupsWhile the research on regulation and entrepreneurship is vast, there are few studies examining technology startups and regulations. Studies that do examine technology and regulation focus on

55、 specific industries or specific regulationsfor example, fintech and securities regulations (Brummer, 2015; Treleaven, 2015), blockchain regulation (Henderson and Luther, 2017; Luther, 2019), regulation of medical technologies (Stern, 2017),or technology startups and challenges with intellectual pro

56、perty (Halt et al., 2017). While these and many other studies of specific regulations and technologies make important contributions, they do not attempt to examine on an aggregate level the relationship between regulations and technology startups.A subset of regulation and technology startup researc

57、h that gener- ates aggregate empirical findings is centered on startup funding and how regulations can determine the existence and amount of angel and venture funding. Gompers and Lerner (1999) find that changes in regulation over pension funds in the United States led to more funding flowing to ven

58、ture capital firms, thereby increasing the supply of venture capital funding.They also find that reductions in capital gains taxes in the United States increased the demand for venture capital funds. Jeng and Wells (2000) examine the determinants of venture capital funding and conclude that, among o

59、ther factors, certain government policies and regulation have an impact on the extent of the venture capital market across different countries. Da Rin et al. (2006) analyze 14 European countries between 1988 and 2001 and find that reductions in corporate capital gains taxes and reductions in labor r

60、egulations stimulate aggregate venture capital investments. Pilington and Dyerson (2006) also find that factors such as the legal environment, tax system, and labour market regulations helpexplain the differences in venture capital development between the United States and Sweden. Bruton et al. (200