IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jindec/v35y1987i4p583-606.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Relationship between Firm Size and Firm Growth in the U.S. Manufacturing Sector

Author

Listed:
  • Hall, Bronwyn H

Abstract

Using panel data on the publicly traded firms in the U.S. manufacturing sector in the recent past, the author finds that most of the change in employment at the firm level in any given year is permanent, that year-to-year growth rates are largely uncorrelated over time or with prior characteristics of the firm, and that there is almost no measurement error. Gibrat's Law is weakly rejected for the smaller firms in the sample and accepted for the larger firms. This find remains when the author controls for the effect of selection (attrition) on estimates obtained from this sample. Copyright 1987 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Suggested Citation

  • Hall, Bronwyn H, 1987. "The Relationship between Firm Size and Firm Growth in the U.S. Manufacturing Sector," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(4), pages 583-606, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jindec:v:35:y:1987:i:4:p:583-606
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-1821%28198706%2935%3A4%3C583%3ATRBFSA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-O&origin=bc
    File Function: full text
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to JSTOR subscribers. See http://www.jstor.org for details.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bronwyn H. Hall & Zvi Griliches & Jerry A. Hausman, 1984. "Patents and R&D: Is There A Lag?," NBER Working Papers 1454, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. John Bound & Clint Cummins & Zvi Griliches & Bronwyn H. Hall & Adam B. Jaffe, 1984. "Who Does R&D and Who Patents?," NBER Chapters, in: R&D, Patents, and Productivity, pages 21-54, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Bronwyn H. Hall & Clint Cumminq & Elizabeth S. Laderman & Joy Mundy, 1988. "The R&D Master File Documentation," NBER Technical Working Papers 0072, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. White, Halbert, 1980. "A Heteroskedasticity-Consistent Covariance Matrix Estimator and a Direct Test for Heteroskedasticity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(4), pages 817-838, May.
    5. Stephen Hymer & Peter Pashigian, 1962. "Firm Size and Rate of Growth," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 70, pages 556-556.
    6. Olsen, Randall J, 1980. "A Least Squares Correction for Selectivity Bias," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(7), pages 1815-1820, November.
    7. Nelson, Forrest D., 1977. "Censored regression models with unobserved, stochastic censoring thresholds," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(3), pages 309-327, November.
    8. Zvi Griliches, 1984. "Market Value, R&D, and Patents," NBER Chapters, in: R&D, Patents, and Productivity, pages 249-252, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. William C. Brainard & John B. Shoven, 1980. "The financial valuation of the return to capital," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue 4, pages 43-104.
    10. Breusch, T S & Pagan, A R, 1979. "A Simple Test for Heteroscedasticity and Random Coefficient Variation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(5), pages 1287-1294, September.
    11. Robert E. Lucas Jr., 1978. "On the Size Distribution of Business Firms," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 9(2), pages 508-523, Autumn.
    12. William C. Brainard & John B. Shoven & Laurence Weiss, 1980. "The Financial Valuation of the Return to Capital," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 11(2), pages 453-512.
    13. Thomas E. MaCurdy, 1981. "Asymptotic Properties of Quasi-Maximum Likelihood Estimators and Test Statistics," NBER Technical Working Papers 0014, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Jovanovic, Boyan, 1982. "Selection and the Evolution of Industry," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(3), pages 649-670, May.
    15. Lee, Lung-Fei & Maddala, G S, 1985. "The Common Structure of Tests for Selectivity Bias, Serial Correlation, Heteroscedaticity, and Non-normality in the Tobit Model," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 26(1), pages 1-20, February.
    16. Amemiya, Takeshi, 1984. "Tobit models: A survey," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 24(1-2), pages 3-61.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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, 2007. "Firm Growth : a Survey," Post-Print halshs-00155762, HAL.
    2. Roberta Piergiovanni, 2010. "Gibrat's Law in the “Third Italy”: Firm Growth in the Veneto Region," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(1), pages 28-58, March.
    3. Klock, Mark & Megna, Pamela, 2000. "Measuring and valuing intangible capital in the wireless communications industry," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 40(4), pages 519-532.
    4. 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.
    5. Erzo G. J. Luttmer, 2006. "Consumer search and firm growth," Working Papers 645, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    6. Zvi Griliches & Bronwyn H. Hall & Ariel Pakes, 1988. "R&D, Patents, and Market Value Revisited: Is There Evidence of A SecondTechnological Opportunity Related Factor?," NBER Working Papers 2624, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Jozef Konings & Ana Xavier, 2002. "Firm Growth and Survival in a Transition Country: Micro Evidence from Slovenia," LICOS Discussion Papers 11402, LICOS - Centre for Institutions and Economic Performance, KU Leuven.
    8. Zvi Griliches & Ariel Pakes & Bronwyn H. Hall, 1986. "The Value of Patents as Indicators of Inventive Activity," NBER Working Papers 2083, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Erzo G. J. Luttmer, 2007. "New goods and the size distribution of firms," Working Papers 649, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    10. Cadogan, Godfrey, 1994. "Do Public Sector Contracts And Policy Towards Small Firms Matter?: Evidence From Women Business Enterprises," MPRA Paper 26595, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 14 Sep 2010.
    11. Bessen, James, 2009. "Estimates of patent rents from firm market value," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(10), pages 1604-1616, December.
    12. Cefis, Elena & Ciccarelli, Matteo & Orsenigo, Luigi, 2007. "Testing Gibrat's legacy: A Bayesian approach to study the growth of firms," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 348-369, September.
    13. Larrain, Borja & Yogo, Motohiro, 2008. "Does firm value move too much to be justified by subsequent changes in cash flow," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(1), pages 200-226, January.
    14. Lewellen, Wilbur G. & Badrinath, S. G., 1997. "On the measurement of Tobin's q," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(1), pages 77-122, April.
    15. Erzo G. J. Luttmer, 2011. "On the Mechanics of Firm Growth," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 78(3), pages 1042-1068.
    16. Goedhuys, Micheline, 2007. "The impact of innovation activities on productivity and firm growth: evidence from Brazil," MERIT Working Papers 2007-002, United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    17. Segal, Uzi & Spivak, Avia, 1989. "Firm size and optimal growth rates," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 159-167, January.
    18. Reid, Gavin C & Xu, Zhibin, 2009. "Growth and Survival Determinants of Chinese Private Firms: Fieldwork evidence and econometric estimates," SIRE Discussion Papers 2009-60, Scottish Institute for Research in Economics (SIRE).
    19. John Sutton, 1996. "Gibrats Legacy," STICERD - Economics of Industry Papers 14, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
    20. ŠEmsa ÖZAR & Gökhan ÖZERTAN & Zeynep Burcu İRFANOĞLU, 2008. "Micro And Small Enterprise Growth In Turkey: Under The Shadow Of Financial Crisis," The Developing Economies, Institute of Developing Economies, vol. 46(4), pages 331-362, December.

    More about this item

    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:bla:jindec:v:35:y:1987:i:4:p:583-606. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Wiley Content Delivery). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0022-1821 .

    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 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.