Risk-taking and risk aversion

The cover of the Wall Street Journal† Monday proclaimed:

Risk-Averse Culture Infects U.S. Workers, Entrepreneurs
By Ben Casselman

Three long-running trends suggest the U.S. economy has turned soft on risk: Companies add jobs more slowly, even in good times. Investors put less money into new ventures. And, more broadly, Americans start fewer businesses and are less inclined to change jobs or move for new opportunities.

The VC story isn’t quite as compelling as promised. Some of the story is already known — that VCs keep hoping for another Internet bubble that won’t return (but spawned excess entry). At least one measure — share of VC for seed capital — the trend isn’t monotonic, but shows peaks and valleys.

The concentration of VC in Silicon Valley can be read two ways: VC only wants Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, or entrepreneurs know they should move to Silicon Valley to get funding. And as everyone knows, the companies that VCs fund are only a small fraction of the nation’s startups.

And while Casselman reported new specifics, we know that the last four years has been a jobless “recovery.” Citing the work of Maryland economist John Haltiwanger, he wrote:

In the eight recessions from the end of World War II through the end of the 1980s, it took the U.S. a little more than 20 months, on average, for employment to return to its pre recession peak. But after the relatively shallow recession of the early 1990s, it took 32 months for payrolls to rebound fully.

After the even milder recession of 2001, it took four years. Today, nearly four years after the end of the last recession, employment has yet to reach its pre crisis peak.

No, what was really troubling is what the story said about America’s entrepreneurial culture. This is what made America successful over the past 150 years, and the envy of the world. (It is also why, as some have argued, the country needs a new frontier to keep entrepreneurial processes alive).

Instead, Americans are changing cities often, changing jobs less often, and working more for big companies than for small companies. Even family businesses are not being passed down, as the children of entrepreneurs opt for the safety and comfort of corporate jobs.

As a natural consequence of this cultural shift, young companies account for a declining share of both the population of companies and national employment. This is terrible for the country, because we know (especially from Prof. Haltiwanger’s research) that young companies account for all the net job creation in this country. These little companies are finding it harder to compete against established incumbents.

I wish I had an answer. The country has become more regulated and bureaucratic, and it’s taking a toll on entrepreneurial intentions. Thirty years ago, we had an effort to reset the country’s attitude towards risk taking and free markets, but the tide has been inexorably coming in ever since.

† It’s to the Journal’s credit that they devoted so much space to the topic. Twenty years from now, we’ll hold this out as an example of why newspapers were once a good thing and tragic that they all died.