If business firms face a multiplicative growth process in which their growth rates are independent from their sizes, then these sizes cannot be distributed according to a stationary Pareto distribution. At the same time , the Laplace distribution of growth rates cannot be easily reconciled with...

Since the seminal work of Pareto, many empirical analyses suggested that the distribution of firms size is characterized by an asymptotic power like behavior. At the same time, recent investigations show that the distribution of annual growth rates of business firms displays a remarkable...

Analyzing a comprehensive database of limited liability manufacturing firms this paper investigates the relation between a firm’s financial situation and its conditional expected growth rate. Specifically, using quantile regressions, we obtain a quantitative characterization of this relation...

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

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

Analyzing a large sample of Italian firms we find that the probability of default increases with size. This contrasts with the common observation, based on measures of exit from business registry data, that firms' death rate is inversely related to the scale of their operation and suggests a...

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...