What is good for a country may not be good for its big businesses, at least recently. More turnover in top businesses correlates with faster per capita gross domestic product, productivity, and capital growth; supporting Schumpeter's [1942. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, third ed., Harper & Bros., New York, NY] theory of “creative destruction”—innovative firms blooming as stagnant ones wither. These correlations are greater in more developed economies, supporting Aghion and Howitt's [1992. A model of growth through creative destruction. Econometrica 60, 323–351] thesis that creative destruction matters more to economies nearer the technological frontier. More big business turnover also correlates with smaller government, common law, less bank-dependence, stronger shareholder rights, and greater openness.

Traditional U.S. industries with higher firm-specific stock return and fundamentals performance heterogeneity use information technology (IT) more intensively and post faster productivity growth in the late 20th century. We argue that this mechanically reflects a wave of Schumpeter's creative destruction disrupting a wide swath of industries, with successful IT adopters unpredictably undermining established firms. This validates endogenous growth theory models of creative destruction and suggests intensified creative destruction as explaining findings associating greater firm-specific performance variation with higher per capita GDPs, economy growth rates, accounting standards, financial system development, and property right protection.