IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/halshs-01802871.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Growth volatility and size: A firm-level study

Author

Listed:
  • Flavio Calvino

    (OCDE - Organisation de Coopération et de Développement Economiques = Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development)

  • Chiara Criscuolo

    (LSE - London School of Economics and Political Science, OCDE - Organisation de Coopération et de Développement Economiques = Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development)

  • Carlo Menon

    (OCDE - Organisation de Coopération et de Développement Economiques = Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, LSE - London School of Economics and Political Science)

  • Angelo Secchi

    (PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement)

Abstract

This paper provides a systematic cross-country investigation of the relation between a firm's growth volatility and its size. For the first time the analysis is carried out using comparable and representative sets of data sourced by official business registers of an important number of countries. We show that there exists a robust negative relation between growth volatility and size with an average elasticity equal to . We check the robustness of this result against a number of potential sources of bias and in particular with respect to sectoral disaggregation and against the inclusion of firm age. Our result is consistent with the idea that independently from specific country characteristics there exists a common underlying mechanism driving the elasticity between size and growth volatility. We then propose two mechanisms able to explain our result and we conclude discussing its relevance with respect to the recent literature on granularity.

Suggested Citation

  • Flavio Calvino & Chiara Criscuolo & Carlo Menon & Angelo Secchi, 2018. "Growth volatility and size: A firm-level study," Post-Print halshs-01802871, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-01802871
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jedc.2018.04.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Luis Garicano & Claire Lelarge & John Van Reenen, 2016. "Firm Size Distortions and the Productivity Distribution: Evidence from France," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(11), pages 3439-3479, November.
    2. Steven J. Davis & John Haltiwanger & Ron Jarmin & Javier Miranda, 2007. "Volatility and Dispersion in Business Growth Rates: Publicly Traded versus Privately Held Firms," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2006, Volume 21, pages 107-180, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Diego A. Comin & Thomas Philippon, 2006. "The Rise in Firm-Level Volatility: Causes and Consequences," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2005, Volume 20, pages 167-228, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Giulio Bottazzi & Angelo Secchi, 2006. "Gibrat's Law and diversification," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 15(5), pages 847-875, October.
    5. Paula Garda & Volker Ziemann, 2014. "Economic Policies and Microeconomic Stability: A Literature Review and Some Empirics," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 1115, OECD Publishing.
    6. Cosmin Ilut & Matthias Kehrig & Martin Schneider, 2018. "Slow to Hire, Quick to Fire: Employment Dynamics with Asymmetric Responses to News," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 126(5), pages 2011-2071.
    7. Sutton, John, 2002. "The variance of firm growth rates: the ‘scaling’ puzzle," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 312(3), pages 577-590.
    8. Eric J. Bartelsman & John Haltiwanger & Stefano Scarpetta, 2004. "Microeconomic Evidence of Creative Destruction in Industrial and Developing Countries," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 04-114/3, Tinbergen Institute.
    9. Xavier Gabaix, 2011. "The Granular Origins of Aggregate Fluctuations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 79(3), pages 733-772, May.
    10. Ryan A. Decker & Pablo N. D'Erasmo & Hernan Moscoso Boedo, 2016. "Market Exposure and Endogenous Firm Volatility over the Business Cycle," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 8(1), pages 148-198, January.
    11. Fu, Dongfeng & Pammolli, Fabio & Buldyrev, Sergey V. & Riccaboni, Massimo & Matia, Kaushik & Yamasaki, Kazuko & Stanley, H. Eugene, 2005. "The Growth of Business Firms: Theoretical Framework and Empirical Evidence," MPRA Paper 15905, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Davis, Steven J. & Haltiwanger, John, 1999. "Gross job flows," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 41, pages 2711-2805, Elsevier.
    13. Diego Comin & Sunil Mulani, 2006. "Diverging Trends in Aggregate and Firm Volatility," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 88(2), pages 374-383, May.
    14. L. A. N. Amaral & S. V. Buldyrev & S. Havlin & H. Leschhorn & P. Maass & M. A. Salinger & H. E. Stanley & M. H. R. Stanley, 1997. "Scaling behavior in economics: I. Empirical results for company growth," Papers cond-mat/9702082, arXiv.org.
    15. Stephen Hymer & Peter Pashigian, 1962. "Firm Size and Rate of Growth," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 70, pages 556-556.
    16. Joshua D. Angrist, 1998. "Estimating the Labor Market Impact of Voluntary Military Service Using Social Security Data on Military Applicants," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 66(2), pages 249-288, March.
    17. Francesca Lotti & Enrico Santarelli & Marco Vivarelli, 2003. "Does Gibrat's Law hold among young, small firms?," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 13(3), pages 213-235, August.
    18. Julian di Giovanni & Andrei A. Levchenko, 2012. "Country Size, International Trade, and Aggregate Fluctuations in Granular Economies," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 120(6), pages 1083-1132.
    19. Marco Capasso & Elena Cefis, 2012. "Firm Size and Growth Rate Variance: The Effects of Data Truncation," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 41(3), pages 193-205, November.
    20. Nunes Amaral, Luís A & Buldyrev, Sergey V & Havlin, Shlomo & Maass, Philipp & Salinger, Michael A & Eugene Stanley, H & Stanley, Michael H.R, 1997. "Scaling behavior in economics: The problem of quantifying company growth," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 244(1), pages 1-24.
    21. Flavio Calvino & Chiara Criscuolo & Carlo Menon, 2016. "No Country for Young Firms?: Start-up Dynamics and National Policies," OECD Science, Technology and Industry Policy Papers 29, OECD Publishing.
    22. Chiara Criscuolo & Peter N. Gal & Carlo Menon, 2015. "dynemp: A routine for distributed microdata analysis of business dynamics," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 15(1), pages 247-274, March.
    23. David J. Teece & Gary Pisano & Amy Shuen, 1997. "Dynamic capabilities and strategic management," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(7), pages 509-533, August.
    24. Alex Coad, 2008. "Firm growth and scaling of growth rate variance in multiplant firms," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 12(9), pages 1-15.
    25. John Haltiwanger & Ron S. Jarmin & Javier Miranda, 2013. "Who Creates Jobs? Small versus Large versus Young," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 95(2), pages 347-361, May.
    26. G. Bottazzi & E. Cefis & G. Dosi & A. Secchi, 2007. "Invariances and Diversities in the Patterns of Industrial Evolution: Some Evidence from Italian Manufacturing Industries," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 29(1), pages 137-159, June.
    27. Clifford M. Hurvich & Jeffrey S. Simonoff & Chih‐Ling Tsai, 1998. "Smoothing parameter selection in nonparametric regression using an improved Akaike information criterion," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 60(2), pages 271-293.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Fontanelli, Luca & Guerini, Mattia & Napoletano, Mauro, 2023. "International trade and technological competition in markets with dynamic increasing returns," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    2. Arata, Yoshiyuki, 2019. "Firm growth and Laplace distribution: The importance of large jumps," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 63-82.
    3. Giovanni Dosi & Marco Grazzi & Daniele Moschella & Gary Pisano & Federico Tamagni, 2019. "Long-Term Firm Growth: An Empirical Analysis of US Manufacturers 1959-2015," LEM Papers Series 2019/13, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.
    4. Yang, Jangho & Heinrich, Torsten & Winkler, Julian & Lafond, François & Koutroumpis, Pantelis & Farmer, J. Doyne, 2019. "Measuring productivity dispersion: a parametric approach using the Lévy alpha-stable distribution," MPRA Paper 96474, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Giovanni Dosi & Richard B Freeman & Marcelo C Pereira & Andrea Roventini & Maria Enrica Virgillito, 2021. "The impact of deunionization on the growth and dispersion of productivity and pay [It’s where you work: increases in the dispersion of earnings across establishments and individuals in the United S," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 30(2), pages 377-408.
    6. Campi, Mercedes & Dueñas, Marco, 2020. "Volatility and economic growth in the twentieth century," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 330-343.
    7. Flavio Calvino & Daniele Giachini & Mattia Guerini, 2022. "The age distribution of business firms," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 32(1), pages 205-245, January.
    8. Stelian STANCU & Eugenia GRECU & Mirela Ionela ACELEANU & Daniela Livia TRAŞCĂ & Claudiu Tiberiu ALBULESCU, 2021. "Does Firm Size Matters for Firm Growth? Evidence from the Romanian Health Sector," Journal for Economic Forecasting, Institute for Economic Forecasting, vol. 0(1), pages 17-31, December.
    9. Giulio Bottazzi & Taewon Kang & Federico Tamagni, 2023. "Persistence in firm growth: inference from conditional quantile transition matrices," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 61(2), pages 745-770, August.
    10. Antonella Biscione & Raul Caruso & Annunziata de Felice, 2021. "Environmental innovation in European transition countries," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 53(5), pages 521-535, January.
    11. Chodorow-Reich, Gabriel & Darmouni, Olivier & Luck, Stephan & Plosser, Matthew, 2022. "Bank liquidity provision across the firm size distribution," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(3), pages 908-932.
    12. Yang, Jangho & Heinrich, Torsten & Winkler, Julian & Lafond, François & Koutroumpis, Pantelis & Farmer, J. Doyne, 2019. "Measuring productivity dispersion: a parametric approach using the Lévy alpha-stable distribution," MPRA Paper 96474, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alex Coad & Werner Hölzl, 2012. "Firm Growth: Empirical Analysis," Chapters, in: Michael Dietrich & Jackie Krafft (ed.), Handbook on the Economics and Theory of the Firm, chapter 24, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    2. Thomas Brenner & Matthias Duschl, 2018. "Modeling Firm and Market Dynamics: A Flexible Model Reproducing Existing Stylized Facts on Firm Growth," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 52(3), pages 745-772, October.
    3. Fontanelli, Luca & Guerini, Mattia & Napoletano, Mauro, 2023. "International trade and technological competition in markets with dynamic increasing returns," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    4. Fabio Pieri, 2018. "Vertical organization of production and firm growth," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 27(1), pages 83-106.
    5. Thomas Brenner & Matthias Duschl, 2014. "Modelling Firm and Market Dynamics - A Flexible Model Reproducing Existing Stylized Facts," Working Papers on Innovation and Space 2014-07, Philipps University Marburg, Department of Geography.
    6. Luca Fontanelli, 2023. "Theories of market selection: a survey," LEM Papers Series 2023/22, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.
    7. Vasco M. Carvalho & Basile Grassi, 2019. "Large Firm Dynamics and the Business Cycle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(4), pages 1375-1425, April.
    8. Cristina Fernández & Roberta García & Paloma Lopez-Garcia & Benedicta Marzinotto & Roberta Serafini & Juuso Vanhala & Ladislav Wintr, 2017. "Firm growth in Europe: An overview based on the COMPNET labour module," BCL working papers 107, Central Bank of Luxembourg.
    9. Hernan Mondani & Petter Holme & Fredrik Liljeros, 2014. "Fat-Tailed Fluctuations in the Size of Organizations: The Role of Social Influence," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(7), pages 1-9, July.
    10. Steven J. Davis & John Haltiwanger & Ron Jarmin & Javier Miranda, 2007. "Volatility and Dispersion in Business Growth Rates: Publicly Traded versus Privately Held Firms," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2006, Volume 21, pages 107-180, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Chiara Criscuolo & Peter N. Gal & Carlo Menon, 2014. "The Dynamics of Employment Growth: New Evidence from 18 Countries," CEP Discussion Papers dp1274, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    12. Giulio Bottazzi & Angelo Secchi & Federico Tamagni, 2014. "Financial constraints and firm dynamics," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 42(1), pages 99-116, January.
    13. Marco Capasso & Elena Cefis & Alessandro Sapio, 2013. "Reconciling quantile autoregressions of firm size and variance–size scaling," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 41(3), pages 609-632, October.
    14. Arata, Yoshiyuki, 2019. "Firm growth and Laplace distribution: The importance of large jumps," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 63-82.
    15. Giovanni Dosi & Mauro Napoletano & Andrea Roventini & Tania Treibich, 2019. "Debunking the granular origins of aggregate fluctuations: from real business cycles back to Keynes," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 29(1), pages 67-90, March.
    16. Casares, Miguel, 2013. "On firm-level, industry-level, and aggregate employment fluctuations," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 37(12), pages 2963-2978.
    17. Paula Garda & Volker Ziemann, 2014. "Economic Policies and Microeconomic Stability: A Literature Review and Some Empirics," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 1115, OECD Publishing.
    18. Distante, Roberta & Petrella, Ivan & Santoro, Emiliano, 2018. "Gibrat’s law and quantile regressions: An application to firm growth," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 5-9.
    19. Alex Coad, 2007. "Firm Growth: a Survey," Post-Print halshs-00155762, HAL.
    20. Giovanni Dosi & Marco Grazzi & Daniele Moschella & Gary Pisano & Federico Tamagni, 2019. "Long-Term Firm Growth: An Empirical Analysis of US Manufacturers 1959-2015," LEM Papers Series 2019/13, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Firm size ; Gibrat’s law; Volatility of growth;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D22 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis
    • L25 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Firm Performance

    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:hal:journl:halshs-01802871. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.