The upper tail of the firm size distribution is often assumed to follow a Power Law behavior. Recently, using different estimators and on different data sets, several papers conclude that this distribution follows the Zipf Law, meaning that the fraction of firms whose size is above a given value...

Since the seminal work of Teece et al. (1994) firm diversification has been found to be a non-random process. The hidden deterministic nature of the diversification patterns is usually detected comparing expected (under a null hypothesys) and actual values of some statistics. Nevertheless the...

The study of firms' default has attracted wide interest among both practitioners and scholars. However, attention has often been limited to a relatively small set of financial variables. In this work, we try to increase the scope of analysis extending the investigation to other possible...

This work explores a number of properties investigated in the empirical literature on firm size and growth dynamics: (i) the distribution and the autoregressive structure of firm size; (ii) the existence of size-growth scaling relationships; (iii) the distribution and the autoregressive structure...

This paper investigates the relevance of financial and economic variables as determinants of firm defaults. Our analysis is not limited to publicly traded companies but extends to a large sample of limited liability firms. We consider size, growth, profitability and productivity together with a...

Theoretical and empirical studies of industry dynamics have extensively focused on the process of growth. Theory predicts production efficiency, profitability and financial status as the central channels through which firms can survive, grow and eventually achieve out- standing growth...

Diverse theories of industry dynamics predict heterogeneity in production efficiency to be the driver of firms' growth, survival and industrial change, either through a direct link between efficiency and growth, or through an indirect effect via profitabilities, as more productive firms can...

This study analyzes the effect of financial constraints (FCs) on firm dynamics. We measure FCs with an official credit rating, which captures availability and cost of external resources. We find that FCs undermine average firm growth, induce anti-correlation in growth patterns and reduce the...

In this work we investigate two crucial dimensions of firms’ structure and dynamics, that is profitability and productivity performance. The empirical distributions and the associated persistence over time are explored through a set of parametric and non parametric exercises performed on an...

The ability of firms to access external financial resources represents a key factor in- fluencing several dimensions of firms’ dynamics. However, while recent qualitative evidence suggests the existence of heterogeneous and asymmetric reactions of firms to financing constraints (FC) problems,...