Dynamics of the productive offer: technological diffusion, young companies, migrants.

Summary Chapter 1 proposes a neo-Schumpeterian model of technological diffusion in which the positive externality linked to diffusion has a negative indirect effect, passing through the capital market equilibrium and acting on the probability of technology adoption. Four long-run growth regimes emerge. In Chapter 2, we study the links between technical progress, technological diffusion and education. We examine the robustness of the results of Benhabib and Spiegel (2005). Our results are contradictory with theirs on technological diffusion, but the effect of the level of education on TFP growth appears positive. In Chapter 3, we study the relationship in France between the initial size of a firm and its subsequent survival. The relationship obtained between initial employment and the exit rate is original in the international literature. Chapter 4 evaluates the effect of the ACCRE on the life cycle of firms. This is a one-year exemption from social security contributions, granted after a selection process. Taking into account this endogeneity, we obtain that the causal effect of the ACCRE is non-significant. In Chapter 5, we look at the effect of international migration flows on per capita GDP growth. The effect of net migration is better than that of the natural population balance, but its total impact is insignificant. Finally, chapter 6 studies the differences in the number of firms created in France according to the nationality of the founder. We propose a method of decomposing survival differences into a share attributable to observables and a share linked to unobservables. The latter is predominant.