https://macropaperwarehouse.com/authors/marek-ignaszak/Marek IgnaszakHugo -- gohugo.ioen-ushttps://macropaperwarehouse.com/papers/customer-acquisition-business-dynamism-and-aggregate-growth/https://macropaperwarehouse.com/papers/customer-acquisition-business-dynamism-and-aggregate-growth/<p>This paper asks whether firm-level customer acquisition — distinct from productivity differences — is a quantitatively important driver of aggregate economic growth, and whether ignoring it distorts predictions about growth policy efficacy. The authors build a novel endogenous growth model in which innovating firms must first accumulate customers to sell their products, with two channels of customer acquisition operating simultaneously: costly sales-and-marketing expenditure and below-static-markup pricing (sales-driven accumulation). The model is estimated using indirect inference against a combination of aggregate data (U.S. real GDP per worker growth of 1.43% annually, 1979–2019), Business Dynamics Statistics (BDS) life-cycle profiles, and firm-level data from Compustat matched to Capital IQ&rsquo;s sales-and-marketing expense records covering 1997–2019.</p>