It is frequently argued that policymakers should target high-tech firms, i.e., firms with high R&D intensity, because such firms are considered more innovative and therefore potential fast-growers. This argument relies on the assumption that the association among high-tech status, innovativeness...

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,...

The purpose of this paper is to distinguish between the determinants of new start-ups and in-migration of firms using a data-set that covers 13,471 limited liability firms in the Swedish wholesale trade industries during the period 2000-2004. Our results indicate that the presence of a...

The purpose of this paper is to investigate if the industry context matters for whether Gibrat's law is rejected or not using a dataset that consists of all limited firms in 5-digit NACE-industries in Sweden during 1998-2004. The results reject Gibrat's law on an aggregate level, since small...

Gibrat’s Law predicts that firm growth is a purely random effect and therefore should be independent of firm size. The purpose of this paper is to test Gibrat’s law within the retail industry, using a novel data-set comprising all Swedish limited liability companies active at some point...

Recent studies have suggested that most firms do not grow, and that a small number of high-growth firms create most new jobs. High-growth firms have therefore attracted an increasing amount of attention from researchers and policymakers. However, there is no uniform definition of what...

Many countries have undertaken central-bank independence reforms, but the years of implementation differ. What explains such differences in timing? This is of interest more broadly, as it sheds light on factors that matter for the speed at which economic reforms come about. We study a rich set...

IKEA is one of the world’s largest retailers, but little is known about how IKEA impact incumbent retailers when deciding to enter a local market. Previous studies on the effects of big-box entry on surrounding retailers have also generated inconclusive results, and mainly been focused towards...

Central banks have been made more independent in many countries. A common rationale has been the existence of a credibility (or lack-of-trust) problem for monetary policy. This indicates a possible and until now unexplored link between social trust and central-bank independence. Our empirical...

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether increasing gender diversity on the board of directors improves firm perfomance, using a data-set of 20,487 limited companies in Sweden during 1997-2005. We use a random-effects random-coefficients model to account for unobserved firm...