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Do firm sizes and profit rates converge? Evidence on Gibrat's Law and the persistence of profits in the long run

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  • John Goddard
  • David McMillan
  • John Wilson

Abstract

Three panel unit root tests are applied to a 31-year firm size, growth and profit rate data set for 96 large, quoted UK firms. All tests reject the unit root null for log size if the Augmented Dickey Fuller autoregressions exclude a linear time trend. If a linear trend is included, the results are more ambiguous and appear to differ systematically between tests. The view that firm growth is either random or near-random does not receive unequivocal support in all tests. There is however strong and consistent evidence of mean-reversion in profit rates.

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  • John Goddard & David McMillan & John Wilson, 2006. "Do firm sizes and profit rates converge? Evidence on Gibrat's Law and the persistence of profits in the long run," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(3), pages 267-278.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:38:y:2006:i:3:p:267-278
    DOI: 10.1080/00036840500367955
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    3. Botoc Claudiu, 2013. "Profitability - Capital Structure Trade Off: Case Of Publicly Romanian Companies," Annals of Faculty of Economics, University of Oradea, Faculty of Economics, vol. 1(1), pages 969-975, July.
    4. Jan Bentzen & Erik Madsen & Valdemar Smith, 2012. "Do firms’ growth rates depend on firm size?," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 39(4), pages 937-947, November.
    5. Zoltan Bakucs & Stefan Bojnec & Imre Fertő & Laure Latruffe, 2013. "Farm size and growth in field crop and dairy farms in France, Hungary and Slovenia," Post-Print hal-01208897, HAL.
    6. Wang, Wei & Zhang, Yue-Jun, 2022. "Does China's carbon emissions trading scheme affect the market power of high-carbon enterprises?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    7. Andrea Vaona, 2010. "On the gravitation and convergence of industry profit rates in Denmark, Finland, Italy and the US," Working Papers 02/2010, University of Verona, Department of Economics.
    8. Höhler, Julia & Kuhl, Rainer, 2014. "Corporations in an evolving competitive environment - evidence for the German agribusiness," 2014 International Congress, August 26-29, 2014, Ljubljana, Slovenia 182689, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    9. Orhan Akisik & Graham Gal, 2014. "Financial performance and reviews of corporate social responsibility reports," Mathematical Methods of Operations Research, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research (GOR);Nederlands Genootschap voor Besliskunde (NGB), vol. 25(3), pages 259-288, December.
    10. Alper Aslan & Kemal Koksal & Oguz Ocal, 2011. "Competitive Environment Hypothesis in Turkish Banking System," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 1(2), pages 74-77, June.
    11. Ho, Hillbun & Osiyevskyy, Oleksiy & Agarwal, James & Reza, Sadat, 2020. "Does ambidexterity in marketing pay off? The role of absorptive capacity," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 65-79.
    12. Besnik A. Krasniqi & Muhamet Mustafa, 2016. "Small firm growth in a post-conflict environment: the role of human capital, institutional quality, and managerial capacities," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Springer, vol. 12(4), pages 1165-1207, December.
    13. Höhler, Julia & Kühl, Rainer, 2016. "Do Growth Rates Depend on the Initial Firm Size? Evidence for the German Agribusiness," German Journal of Agricultural Economics, Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin, Department for Agricultural Economics, vol. 65(04), December.
    14. Alex Coad & Marc Cowling & Josh Siepel, 2017. "Growth processes of high-growth firms as a four-dimensional chicken and egg," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 26(4), pages 537-554.
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    16. Charles Mossman & Sergiy Rakhmayil, 2011. "Firm size, book-to-market ratio and the macroeconomic environment: theory and test," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(19), pages 2417-2431.

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