IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/huiwps/0035.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The economic contribution of high-growth firms: Do definitions matter?

Author

Listed:
  • Daunfeldt, Sven-Olov

    (The Ratio Institute)

  • Elert, Niklas

    (The Ratio Institute)

  • Johansson, Dan

    () (The Ratio Institute)

Abstract

Prior studies have defined high-growth firms (HGFs) in terms of sales or employment, and analyzed their contribution to employment growth. We define HGFs by employment and sales and add definitions of value added and productivity. We examine the contribution of HGFs to employment growth, economic growth, productivity growth, and sales growth. All HGFs give a disproportionately large positive contribution to economic growth and most also give large positive contributions to growth in employment, productivity and sales. Although HGFs of different definitions are usually not the same firms, young firms are more likely to be HGFs irrespective of definition.

Suggested Citation

  • Daunfeldt, Sven-Olov & Elert, Niklas & Johansson, Dan, 2010. "The economic contribution of high-growth firms: Do definitions matter?," HUI Working Papers 35, HUI Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:huiwps:0035
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.hui.se/MediaBinaryLoader.axd?MediaArchive_FileID=8e42599e-aabb-4395-8408-fbc0f5809dff&MediaArchive_ForceDownload=true
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paul Schreyer, 2000. "High-Growth Firms and Employment," OECD Science, Technology and Industry Working Papers 2000/3, OECD Publishing.
    2. Magnus Henrekson & Dan Johansson, 2010. "Gazelles as job creators: a survey and interpretation of the evidence," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 35(2), pages 227-244, September.
    3. Littunen, Hannu & Tohmo, Timo, 2003. "The High Growth in New Metal-Based Manufacturing and Business Service Firms in Finland," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 21(2), pages 187-200, September.
    4. Henrekson, Magnus & Johansson, Dan, 2008. "Competencies and Institutions Fostering High-growth Firms," Foundations and Trends(R) in Entrepreneurship, now publishers, vol. 5(1), pages 1-80, November.
    5. Bjuggren, Carl Magnus & Daunfeldt, Sven-Olov & Johansson, Dan, 2010. "Ownership and High-Growth Firms," Ratio Working Papers 147, The Ratio Institute, revised 29 Sep 2010.
    6. Werner Hölzl & Klaus Friesenbichler, 2010. "High-growth firms, innovation and the distance to the frontier," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 30(2), pages 1016-1024.
    7. Zoltán J. Ács & Pamela Mueller, 2015. "Employment effects of business dynamics: Mice, Gazelles and Elephants," Chapters,in: Global Entrepreneurship, Institutions and Incentives, chapter 16, pages 304-319 Edward Elgar Publishing.
    8. Alex Coad & Werner Hölzl, 2012. "Firm Growth: Empirical Analysis," Chapters,in: Handbook on the Economics and Theory of the Firm, chapter 24 Edward Elgar Publishing.
    9. Deschryvere, Matthias, 2008. "High Growth Firms and Job Creation in Finland," Discussion Papers 1144, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy.
    10. Sobel, Russell S., 2008. "Testing Baumol: Institutional quality and the productivity of entrepreneurship," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 23(6), pages 641-655, November.
    11. Delmar, Frederic & Davidsson, Per & Gartner, William B., 2003. "Arriving at the high-growth firm," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 189-216, March.
    12. Ana M. Moreno & José C. Casillas, 2007. "High-growth SMEs versus non-high-growth SMEs: a discriminant analysis," Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(1), pages 69-88, January.
    13. Picot, Garnett & Dupuy, Richard, 1998. "Job Creation by Company Size Class: The Magnitude, Concentration and Persistence of Job Gains and Losses in Canada," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 10(2), pages 117-139, March.
    14. Werner Hölzl, 2009. "Is the R&D behaviour of fast-growing SMEs different? Evidence from CIS III data for 16 countries," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 33(1), pages 59-75, June.
    15. Jackson, John E. & Klich, Jacek & Poznanska, Krystyna, 1999. "Firm creation and economic transitions," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 14(5-6), pages 427-450.
    16. Michael Fritsch & Antje Weyh, 2006. "How Large are the Direct Employment Effects of New Businesses? An Empirical Investigation for West Germany," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 245-260, October.
    17. Paloma López-García & Sergio Puente, 2009. "What makes a high-growth firm? A probit analysis using Spanish firm-level data," Working Papers 0920, Banco de España;Working Papers Homepage.
    18. André van Stel & Roy Thurik & F. Stam & Chantal Hartog, 2010. "Ambitious entrepreneurship, high-growth firms and macroeconomic growth," Scales Research Reports H200911, EIM Business and Policy Research.
    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. Choi, Taelim & Robertson, John C. & Rupasingha, Anil, 2013. "High-growth firms in Georgia," FRB Atlanta Working Paper 2013-20, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
    2. Anders Bornhäll & Sven-Olov Daunfeldt & Niklas Rudholm, 2013. "Sleeping Gazelles: High profits but no growth," SPRU Working Paper Series 2013-10, SPRU - Science and Technology Policy Research, University of Sussex.
    3. Jun Du & Yama Temouri, 2015. "High-growth firms and productivity: evidence from the United Kingdom," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 44(1), pages 123-143, January.
    4. Werner Hölzl, 2011. "Persistence, Survival and Growth: A Closer Look at 20 Years of High-Growth Firms in Austria," WIFO Working Papers 403, WIFO.
    5. Enrique Moral-Benito, 2016. "Growing by learning: firm-level evidence on the size-productivity nexus," Working Papers 1613, Banco de España;Working Papers Homepage.
    6. Daniele Moschella & Federico Tamagni & Xiaodan Yu, 2017. "Persistent high-growth firms in China's manufacturing," LEM Papers Series 2017/03, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.
    7. Segarra Blasco, Agustí, 1958- & Teruel, Mercedes, 2014. "High-growth firms and innovation: an empirical analysis for Spanish firms," Working Papers 2072/228402, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Economics.
    8. Sven-Olov Daunfeldt & Daniel Halvarsson, 2015. "Are high-growth firms one-hit wonders? Evidence from Sweden," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 44(2), pages 361-383, February.
    9. Agustí Segarra & Mercedes Teruel, 2014. "High-growth firms and innovation: an empirical analysis for Spanish firms," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 43(4), pages 805-821, December.
    10. Halvarsson, Daniel, 2013. "Identifying High-Growth Firms," Ratio Working Papers 215, The Ratio Institute.
    11. repec:taf:entreg:v:28:y:2016:i:1-2:p:97-125 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Minghao Li & Stephan J. Goetz & Mark Partridge & David A. Fleming, 2016. "Location determinants of high-growth firms," Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(1-2), pages 97-125, January.
    13. Daunfeldt, Sven-Olov & Lang, Åsa & Macuchova, Zuzana & Rudholm, Niklas, 2011. "Firm Growth in the Retail and Wholesale Trade Sectors – Evidence from Sweden," HUI Working Papers 50, HUI Research.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Gazelles; Firm growth; High-impact firms;

    JEL classification:

    • D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity
    • L25 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Firm Performance
    • L26 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Entrepreneurship

    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:hhs:huiwps:0035. 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: (Helena Nilsson). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/huistse.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.