Analysis of Polish business demography using Markov chains

The article describes the use of the Markov chains methodology for analysis of demographic evolution of Polish enterprises in the years 2003 - 2009. According to the results’ presented in the article, flexibility of Polish companies’ activity in changing economic conditions is stable. The level of migration between sectors is low and limited to several sectors. Expected company life is relatively short (on average, Polish companies exist more than twice shorter than e.g. Belgian companies subject to a study by the National Bank of Belgium). In general, the least “vital” companies may be considered companies from the transport section and then from the building industry, other services and commerce sections. Enterprises that stay on the market the longest are companies from the agricultural and industrial sectors. The mean value of the closeness to extinction indicator amounts to 46% for the whole population. Among all sectors and sections, non-specialised exporters have the highest average age. State-owned companies have significantly higher both the average age and the remaining lifetime than private companies. The bigger is a company the higher is its average age and average remaining lifetime.