The 2020 Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research goes to John Haltiwanger, Professor of Economics at University of Maryland, USA

Haltiwanger is awarded for his pioneering research advancing our understanding of job creation and destruction, productivity growth, and the role of small business and entrepreneurial firms in economic development. The Global Award is the foremost international award in entrepreneurship research with a prize sum of € 100,000.

Professor John Haltiwanger has made significant contributions to the field of entrepreneurship by improving our understanding of job creation and destruction, productivity growth, and the role of small and medium-sized firms (SMEs) in economic development. He has played a major role in the careful development of large, longitudinal firm-level datasets, and introduced a novel and widely adopted measure of firm growth that addresses previous statistical biases. His work has influenced public policy and national statistical offices around the world.

Professor Haltiwanger’s most important contributions include:
• To question the conventional wisdom of the job creation ability of small business. He provides evidence that large and mature firms account for most of the newly created manufacturing jobs, and that these jobs are of higher quality than those in SMEs in that they are more likely to persist in subsequent years.
• To show the importance of firm age as opposed to size: the job creation in small firms takes place in the first few years of their existence, as captured in the “up-or-out” dynamics.
• The decomposition of productivity growth into contributions from continuing, entering, and exiting firms. He shows that the largest component of growth can be attributed to continuing firms improving their productivity over time.

The Award ceremony will take place in Stockholm on May 11. For further information, please visit our website, www.e-award.org.

The Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research is the foremost global award for research on entrepreneurship. The Award honors significant contributions to theory-building on entrepreneurship and small business development. The Award consists of the statuette ”The Hand of God” by the Swedish sculptor Carl Milles and a prize amount of 100 000 Euros.

Founder of the Award: Swedish Entrepreneurship Forum. Co-founder: The Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN). Sponsor: Vinnova – Sweden´s Innovation Agency. Donor: Lars Backsell.