Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/
MyIDEAS: Log in (now much improved!) to save this paper

# Scaling behavior in economics: II. Modeling of company growth

## Author Info

Listed author(s):
• S. V. Buldyrev
• L. A. N. Amaral
• S. Havlin
• H. Leschhorn
• P. Maass
• M. A. Salinger
• H. E. Stanley
• M. H. R. Stanley

## Abstract

In the preceding paper we presented empirical results describing the growth of publicly-traded United States manufacturing firms within the years 1974--1993. Our results suggest that the data can be described by a scaling approach. Here, we propose models that may lead to some insight into these phenomena. First, we study a model in which the growth rate of a company is affected by a tendency to retain an optimal'' size. That model leads to an exponential distribution of the logarithm of the growth rate in agreement with the empirical results. Then, we study a hierarchical tree-like model of a company that enables us to relate the two parameters of the model to the exponent $\beta$, which describes the dependence of the standard deviation of the distribution of growth rates on size. We find that $\beta = -\ln \Pi / \ln z$, where $z$ defines the mean branching ratio of the hierarchical tree and $\Pi$ is the probability that the lower levels follow the policy of higher levels in the hierarchy. We also study the distribution of growth rates of this hierarchical model. We find that the distribution is consistent with the exponential form found empirically.

## Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/cond-mat/9702085
File Function: Latest version
Download Restriction: no

## Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by arXiv.org in its series Papers with number cond-mat/9702085.

as
in new window

 Length: Date of creation: Feb 1997 Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:cond-mat/9702085 Contact details of provider: Web page: http://arxiv.org/

## References

No references listed on IDEAS
You can help add them by filling out this form.

## Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

## Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arx:papers:cond-mat/9702085. 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: (arXiv administrators)

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 references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link 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 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.

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis using RePEc data.