IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/phsmap/v324y2003i1p207-212.html

Power law distribution of the frequency of demises of US firms

Author

Listed:
  • Cook, William
  • Ormerod, Paul

Abstract

Both theoretical and applied economics have a great deal to say about many aspects of the firm, but the literature on the extinctions, or demises, of firms is very sparse. We use a publicly available data base covering some 6 million firms in the US and show that the underlying statistical distribution which characterises the frequency of firm demises—the disappearances of firms as autonomous entities—is closely approximated by a power law. The exponent of the power law is, intriguingly, close to that reported in the literature on the extinction of biological species.

Suggested Citation

  • Cook, William & Ormerod, Paul, 2003. "Power law distribution of the frequency of demises of US firms," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 324(1), pages 207-212.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:324:y:2003:i:1:p:207-212
    DOI: 10.1016/S0378-4371(02)01955-6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437102019556
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only. Journal offers the option of making the article available online on Science direct for a fee of $3,000
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/S0378-4371(02)01955-6?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

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

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hart, Peter E & Oulton, Nicholas, 1996. "Growth and Size of Firms," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 106(438), pages 1242-1252, September.
    2. S. V. Buldyrev & L. A. N. Amaral & S. Havlin & H. Leschhorn & P. Maass & M. A. Salinger & H. E. Stanley & M. H. R. Stanley, 1997. "Scaling behavior in economics: II. Modeling of company growth," Papers cond-mat/9702085, arXiv.org.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Rational short-termism
      by chris dillow in Stumbling and Mumbling on 2013-03-06 20:23:55

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Wright, Ian, 2005. "The social architecture of capitalism," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 346(3), pages 589-620.
    2. Coad, Alex, 2010. "Investigating the exponential age distribution of firms," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy, vol. 4, pages 1-30.
    3. Kočišová, J. & Horváth, D. & Brutovský, B., 2009. "The efficiency of individual optimization in the conditions of competitive growth," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 388(17), pages 3585-3592.
    4. Camila C.S. Caiado & Paul Ormerod, 2012. "The structure of economic connections between industries: non-scaling behaviour," International Journal of Complexity in Leadership and Management, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 2(1/2), pages 39-51.
    5. Bridget Rosewell & Paul Ormerod, 2004. "How much can firms know?," Computing in Economics and Finance 2004 44, Society for Computational Economics.
    6. Wright, Ian, 2009. "Implicit Microfoundations for Macroeconomics," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy, vol. 3, pages 1-27.
    7. Guilmi, Corrado Di & Gallegati, Mauro & Ormerod, Paul, 2004. "Scaling invariant distributions of firms’ exit in OECD countries," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 334(1), pages 267-273.
    8. Nick Forster, 2010. "Exposing the Contradictory Claims, Myths and Illusions of the “Secrets of Business Success and Company Longevity†Genre," Vision, , vol. 14(3), pages 141-161, July.
    9. Lavička, H. & Lin, L. & Novotný, J., 2010. "Employment, Production and Consumption model: Patterns of phase transitions," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 389(8), pages 1708-1720.

    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. 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.
    2. Buldyrev, Sergey V. & Salinger, Michael A. & Stanley, H. Eugene, 2016. "A statistical physics implementation of Coase׳s theory of the firm," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(4), pages 536-557.
    3. 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.
    4. Vasilii Erokhin & Dmitry Endovitsky & Alexey Bobryshev & Natalia Kulagina & Anna Ivolga, 2019. "Management Accounting Change as a Sustainable Economic Development Strategy during Pre-Recession and Recession Periods: Evidence from Russia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(11), pages 1-23, June.
    5. Song Zhang & Liang Han & Konstantinos Kallias & Antonios Kallias, 2021. "The value of in-person banking: evidence from U.S. small businesses," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 57(4), pages 1393-1435, November.
    6. Daunfeldt, Sven-Olov & Elert, Niklas & Lang, Ã…sa, 2012. "Does Gibrat's law hold for retailing? Evidence from Sweden," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 19(5), pages 464-469.
    7. Kato, Masatoshi & Legendre, Nicolas & Shirai, Hiroki, 2026. "When do new firms benefit from VC investment? The moderating role of firm age and size," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    8. Georgios Fotopoulos & Ioannis Giotopoulos, 2010. "Gibrat’s law and persistence of growth in Greek manufacturing," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 35(2), pages 191-202, September.
    9. F. Voulgaris & G. Agiomirgianakis & T. Papadogonas, 2015. "Job creation and job destruction in economic crisis at firm level: the case of Greek manufacturing sectors," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 12(1), pages 21-39, March.
    10. Gavin Reid & Zhibin Xu, 2012. "Generalising Gibrat: using Chinese evidence founded on fieldwork," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 39(4), pages 1017-1028, November.
    11. Emiliano Santoro, 2006. "Macroeconomic fluctuations and the firms' rate of growth distribution: evidence from UK and US quoted companies," Department of Economics Working Papers 0606, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia.
    12. Francesca Lotti & Enrico Santarelli & Marco Vivarelli, 2009. "Defending Gibrat’s Law as a long-run regularity," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 32(1), pages 31-44, January.
    13. 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.
    14. Andrea Bellucci & Gianluca Gucciardi & Daniel Nepelski, 2025. "Public grants beneficiaries and venture capital-backed firms: a tale of two funding strategies," The Journal of Technology Transfer, Springer, vol. 50(5), pages 2262-2305, October.
    15. Bartoloni, Eleonora & Baussola, Maurizio & Bagnato, Luca, 2020. "Waiting for Godot? Success or failure of firms’ growth in a panel of Italian manufacturing firms," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 259-275.
    16. J Paul Dunne & Maria Garcia Alonso & Paul Levine & Ron Smith, 2003. "Concentration in the International Arms Industry¤," Working Papers 0301, Department of Accounting, Economics and Finance, Bristol Business School, University of the West of England, Bristol.
    17. Mihaela Ionascu & Ion Ionascu & Marian Sacarin & Mihaela Minu, 2018. "Women on Boards and Financial Performance: Evidence from a European Emerging Market," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(5), pages 1-18, May.
    18. Marco Guerzoni & Luigi Riso & Marco Vivarelli, 2025. "Was Robert Gibrat right? A test based on the graphical model methodology," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 64(2), pages 475-488, February.
    19. Chang-Gyu Yang & Silvana Trimi & Sang-Gun Lee & Joon-Sun Yang, 2017. "A Survival Analysis of Business Insolvency in ICT and Automobile Industries," International Journal of Information Technology & Decision Making (IJITDM), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 16(06), pages 1523-1548, November.
    20. Harabi, Najib, 2003. "Déterminants de la croissance des entreprises: Une analyse empirique du Maroc [Determinants of Firm Growth: An Empirical Analysis from Morocco]," MPRA Paper 4440, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    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:eee:phsmap:v:324:y:2003:i:1:p:207-212. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/physica-a-statistical-mechpplications/ .

    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.