Policymakers tend to give an outsized share of attention and credit to small businesses, touting their role in entrepreneurship, but in doing so they often conflate small businesses with new businesses. Start-ups are important for their contributions to creative destruction and innovation, but small businesses are less efficient because they cannot take advantages of economies of scale.

Fact of the Week: Large Start-Ups Pay New Hires 9 Percent More than Comparable Established Firms

The costs and complexities of AI suggest that it is easier and more economical for larger firms to use.

Fact of the Week: Firms With More Than 1,000 Employees Are 10 Times More Like to Use AI Than Firms With 5 to 10 Employees

In the United States, micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises are just 47 percent as productive as large firms, compared to 60 percent in other advanced economies.

Fact of the Week: US Small Businesses Are 47 Percent as Productive as Big Businesses

It is commonly assumed that the wealth and other benefits that highly innovative firms produce are concentrated among high-skilled workers, since they are the ones who are most likely to be innovating. But a new study casts doubt on this presumption, using matched employee-employer data from the United Kingdom.

Fact of the Week: Low-Skilled Workers Earn 20 Percent More at Highly Innovative Firms

A new fixed effects model finds that larger firms pay between 11 and 20 percent higher wages than small firms.

Fact of the Week: Large Canadian Firms Pay Between 11 and 20 Percent Higher Wages Than Small Firms

In a recent working paper, authors found that engineers and other technical workers raise firm-level productivity by 4 to 5 percent more than otherwise expected without the employment of techies in a year.

Fact of the Week: Engineers and Other Technical Workers Raise Firm-Level Productivity by 4 to 5 Percent

Data from the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics shows that 13.7 percent of firms who use artificial intelligence experienced an increase in total employment.

Fact of the Week: Over 13 Percent of Firms That Use Artificial Intelligence Have Expanded Their Workforce

When EU firms adopted various recent technologies such as e-commerce platforms from 2002 to 2008, employment did not decrease on average, writes John Wu in Innovation Files.

Fact of the Week: European Firms That Adopted Information Technologies Such as E-Commerce Platforms and Enterprise Resource Planning Systems From 2002 to 2008 Did Not Decrease Employment

In the EU-27 countries, from 2013 to 2022, annual wages increased by 0.24 percent in information and communication technology (ICT) services compared to 0.20 percent across the rest of the economy.

Fact of the Week: Employees at Large Firms Perform More Non-Routine Problem-Solving Than Small Firm Employees.

Related

Fact of the Week: Large Start-Ups Pay New Hires 9 Percent More than Comparable Established Firms

Fact of the Week: Firms With More Than 1,000 Employees Are 10 Times More Like to Use AI Than Firms With 5 to 10 Employees

Fact of the Week: US Small Businesses Are 47 Percent as Productive as Big Businesses