This project originated several years ago while the authors were ASA/NSF/CENSUS Research Fellows at the Center for Economic Studies (CES) at the U.S. Bureau of the Census, Washington DC, under grant SBR 980894. The authors were fortunate to have limited access, through CES, to comprehensive U.S. microdata, including all recent firm formations, which they grouped into labor market areas. Over the years, several papers were written using this LEEM (BITS) database at CES.

This research was initiated and supported by the Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, as the first step of a larger project to analyze the causes of regional differences in new firm formation rates in the United States. The research was carried out at CES under the title “U.S. Geographical Diversity in Business Entry Rates.” Subsequent research was funded by the National Science Foundation under grant SES-0080316 and was carried out at CES under the titles “Evaluation of New Service Firm Entries in the Standard Statistical Establishment List” (SSEL) and “The Geographic Concentration of New Firm Formations and Human Capital: Evidence from the Cities,” working paper CES 03–05 (2003). The U.S. Small Business Administration funded the final phase of the project under grant SBAHQ03M534 under the title “Using Census BITS to Explore: Entrepreneurship, Geography and Economic Growth” (2005). Finally, the generous financial support of the Doris and Robert E. McCurdy Distinguished Professorship at the University of Baltimore is acknowledged.