This paper explores firm growth rate distribution in a Gibrat's Law context. It is novel in two respects. First, rather than limiting the analysis to a focus on the conditional mean, we investigate the entire shape of the distribution. Second, we show that differences in the firm growth rate...

Employment is often the primary motivation behind entrepreneurial and industrial policy. But new firms are known to differ greatly in performance. Not every new firm survives and even fewer achieve high growth rates. It is well established that spin-offs – firms founded by employees from...