Canada is consistently ranked among the best places to live. However, its potential for sustainable prosperity could depend on how well its business sector navigates a rapidly changing world. Canadian companies innovate and export less than their American peers and generate lower returns from...

We introduce a model of proportional growth to explain the distribution of business firm growth rates. The model predicts that it is exponential in the central part and depicts an asymptotic power-law behavior in the tails with an exponent ζ = 3. Because of data limitations, previous studies in...

Complex systems can be characterized by classes of equivalency of their elements defined according to system specific rules. We propose a generalized preferential attachment model to describe the class size distribution. The model postulates preferential growth of the existing classes and the...

We present a preferential attachment growth model to obtain the distribution P(K) of number of units K in the classes which may represent business firms or other socio-economic entities. We found that P(K) is described in its central part by a power law with an exponent φ = 2+b/(1−b) which...

We introduce a model of proportional growth to explain the distribution P(g) of business firm growth rates. The model predicts that P(g) is Laplace in the central part and depicts an asymptotic power-law behavior in the tails with an exponent ζ = 3. Because of data limitations, previous studies...

The model by Melitz (2003) predicts that if firms differ in their productivity (TFP) and there exists a fixed costs of entry to export markets, firms begin exporting if productivity exceeds a certain threshold value. Productivity is thus a crucial factor behind firms' export market...

Vast empirical evidence underscores that exporting firms are more productive than non-exporters. As governments accordingly pursue export-promoting policies we are interested in the firmness of these conclusions with respect to African small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and the influence...

The bulk of the global innovative effort takes place in 5 countries: USA, Japan and China as leaders, with France and United Kingdom as immediate followers, which all display, on the long run, a negative marginal value added on innovation. The present paper attempts to answer the following...

This paper seeks to explore the types of innovation that are predominant in SMEs in developing countries and to investigate the impact of these innovations on different dimensions of firm performance based on an industry-wide innovation survey carried out in Nigeria in 2007. Although innovation...

20 years have elapsed since the peaceful protest movement led to the resignation of the old regime in the German Democratic Republic. In the following year both German states reunited. Due to the special situation in Germany the subsequent transformation process is unique within the former...