Autocorrelation and Density Dependence in Organizational Founding Rates

This article assesses the robustness of recent estimates of the effect of density on the founding rates in organizational populations. It reports reanalyses of data on founding rates of six populations of organizations using a generalization of quasi-likelihood estimation that allows specification of autocorrelation processes. Autocorrelation is indeed present in five of the six data sets. However, the main substantive finding of earlier research proves to be robust-a nonmonotonic relationship between density and founding rate-continues to hold in most cases even when autocorrelation is taken into account. In other words, the predicted pattern of nonmonotonic density dependence is robust with respect to the form of autocorrelation investigated.