IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/eim/papers/h201109.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Unraveling the relationship between firm size and economic development: The roles of embodied and disembodied technological progress

Author

Listed:
  • André van Stel
  • Emilio Congregado
  • Antonio Golpe

Abstract

In the last decade, an increasing body of literature has studied the relation between economic development and the rate of independent entrepreneurship. For several developed countries, this relation seems to have changed from a negative relation into a positive one. However, the role of technology, and in particular the roles of embodied and disembodied technological progress, in shaping this relation has not yet been established. We estimate a model, based on Lucas (1978), able to disentangle the roles of both these types of technological progress in determining average firm size (a concept closely but inversely related to the rate of independent entrepreneurship) for 23 OECD countries over the period 1972-2008. Our estimations allow us to establish, for each country, the relative importance of embodied technological change, vis-à-vis disembodied technological change, in determining average firm size. Our results suggest that, notwithstanding the rise of independent entrepreneurship observed in many countries over the last few decades, economies of scale and scope (embodied technological change) continue to play an important role in many advanced economies.

Suggested Citation

  • André van Stel & Emilio Congregado & Antonio Golpe, 2012. "Unraveling the relationship between firm size and economic development: The roles of embodied and disembodied technological progress," Scales Research Reports H201109, EIM Business and Policy Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:eim:papers:h201109
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.entrepreneurship-sme.eu/pdf-ez/H201109.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mirjam Praag & André Stel, 2013. "The more business owners, the merrier? The role of tertiary education," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 41(2), pages 335-357, August.
    2. Andre van Stel, "undated". "COMPENDIA: Harmonizing business ownership data across countries and over time," Papers on Entrepreneurship, Growth and Public Policy 2005-05, Max Planck Institute of Economics, Entrepreneurship, Growth and Public Policy Group.
    3. Abdulnasser Hatemi-J, 2008. "Tests for cointegration with two unknown regime shifts with an application to financial market integration," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 35(3), pages 497-505, November.
    4. André van Stel & Chantal Hartog & J. Cieslik Cieslik, 2010. "Measuring Business Ownership Across Countries and Over Time: Extending the COMPENDIA Data Base," Scales Research Reports H201019, EIM Business and Policy Research.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    More about this item

    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:eim:papers:h201109. 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: (Webmaster EIM). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/eimbpnl.html .

    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.