Temporal disaggregation of business dynamics. New evidence for U.S. economy

We provide new disaggregated data and stylized facts on firm dy- namics of the U.S economy at establishment level by using a state- space method to transform Census yearly data of entry and exit from 1977 to 2013 into quarterly frequency. We select the most significant determinants of these variables by matching Census data with a new database by Federal Reserve Bank. These determinants are extrap- olated by using an unobserved factor model whose loadings are es- timated via Principal Component Analysis. Alternative sources and their data are also investigated and discussed. We find that (i) Entry is pro-cyclical, coincident and symmetric; (ii) Exit is lagging with a maximum positive correlation with RGDP at lag 5 and asymmetric along the business cycle; (iii) the standard macroeconometric models estimated on our disaggregated series support the recent theoretical literature.