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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Small Firms in the U.S. Economy, Three Essays

Abstract

dc:description

This thesis studies the characteristics of small firms in the US using data from the Survey of Small Business Finances (SSBF). The first chapter examines how the owners of small firms use decisions about legal organization, firm size, capital structure, and owner investment in the firm to manage firm risk and also finds the return on assets to be described as a very risky undertaking with high upside gain. The second chapter constructs a dynamic, computable model with heterogeneous agents and endogenous default in which entrepreneurs weigh a firm's current and future returns and uses it to match the SSBF data. The third chapter uses the cross-section of data contained in the same survey to estimate the survival probabilities of small firms both along their life-cycle and the business cycle.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Ph.D.
Level thesis:degree_level
Dissertation
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Economics
Grantor
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Year dc:date
2015

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Herranz Gonzalez, Maria De Las Nieves
Contributors dc:contributor
  • Stefan Krasa

Subjects

dc:subject × 1

Rights

Language dc:language
eng

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Identifier
(MiAaPQ)AAI3392066
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/85599

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
Base URL
www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Herranz Gonzalez, Maria De Las Nieves. Small Firms in the U.S. Economy, Three Essays. Dissertation thesis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/2142/85599