Publications
Publications
- December 2014
- American Economic Review
Private Equity, Jobs, and Productivity
By: Steven J. Davis, John Haltiwanger, Kyle Handley, Ron Jarmin, Josh Lerner and Javier Miranda
Abstract
Private equity critics claim that leveraged buyouts bring huge job losses. To investigate this claim, we construct and analyze a new dataset that covers U.S. private equity transactions from 1980 to 2005. We track 3,200 target firms and their 150,000 establishments before and after acquisition, comparing outcomes to controls similar in terms of industry, size, age, and prior growth. Relative to controls, employment at target establishments declines 3% over two years post buyout and 6% over five years. The job losses are concentrated among public-to-private buyouts and transactions involving firms in the service and retail sectors. But target firms also create more new jobs at new establishments, and they acquire and divest establishments more rapidly. When we consider these additional adjustment margins, net relative job losses at target firms are less than 1% of initial employment. In contrast, the sum of gross job creation and destruction at target firms exceeds that of controls by 13% of employment over two years. In short, private equity buyouts catalyze the creative destruction process in the labor market, with only a modest net impact on employment. The creative destruction response mainly involves a more rapid reallocation of jobs across establishments within target firms.
Keywords
Citation
Davis, Steven J., John Haltiwanger, Kyle Handley, Ron Jarmin, Josh Lerner, and Javier Miranda. "Private Equity, Jobs, and Productivity." American Economic Review 104, no. 12 (December 2014): 3956–3990. (Earlier versions distributed as National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 17399 and Harvard Business School Working Paper No. 12-033.) (Originally called "Private Equity and Employment.")