IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bde/wpaper/0920.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

What makes a high-growth firm? A probit analysis using Spanish firm-level data

Author

Listed:
  • Paloma López-García

    (Banco de España)

  • Sergio Puente

    (Banco de España)

Abstract

Many studies have established that a small number of firms, known as fast-growth firms or Gazelles, create most of the new jobs. In spite of the importance of this topic from a policy-point of view, most of those studies are descriptive and limited to a comparison of the characteristics of the high-growth group with respect to a control group of firms. This paper, on the other hand, performs a multivariate analysis of the determinants of the fast growth of Spanish firms controlling for the possible endogeneity of some variables. We use for that purpose a firm-level database with information for about 200,000 Spanish firms per year between 1996 and 2003. We find that being a start-up increases the probability of fast growth by more than 30 percentage points, conditioned on having survived over the period. Firms with initial higher relative wages and debt ratio, up to a certain point, also experience higher chances of fast growth. Hence, as it was established elsewhere, better access to finance and to human capital are key to increase the number and growth of Gazelles. We also find that high-growth firm sustain their expansion with relatively more debt and fixed-term contracts than the rest of the firms in the sample.

Suggested Citation

  • Paloma López-García & Sergio Puente, 2009. "What makes a high-growth firm? A probit analysis using Spanish firm-level data," Working Papers 0920, Banco de España.
    • Handle: RePEc:bde:wpaper:0920
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.bde.es/f/webbde/SES/Secciones/Publicaciones/PublicacionesSeriadas/DocumentosTrabajo/09/Fic/dt0920e.pdf
    File Function: First version, September 2009
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Agustí Segarra & Mercedes Teruel, 2014. "High-growth firms and innovation: an empirical analysis for Spanish firms," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 43(4), pages 805-821, December.
    2. Paloma Lopez-Garcia & Sergio Puente, 2012. "What makes a high-growth firm? A dynamic probit analysis using Spanish firm-level data," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 39(4), pages 1029-1041, November.
    3. Daunfeldt, Sven-Olov & Elert, Niklas & Johansson, Dan, 2010. "The Economic Contribution of High-Growth Firms: Do Definitions Matter?," Ratio Working Papers 151, The Ratio Institute.
    4. Muraközy, Balázs & Békés, Gábor, 2012. "Magyar gazellák. A gyors növekedésű vállalatok jellemzői és kialakulásuk elemzése [Hungarian gazelles: what makes a high-growth firm in Hungary?]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(3), pages 233-262.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Gazelles; Job creation; Firm-level data;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J23 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Demand
    • L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms
    • L25 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Firm Performance

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bde:wpaper:0920. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Ángel Rodríguez. Electronic Dissemination of Information Unit. Research Department. Banco de España (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bdegves.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.