the life duration of small firms born within a start up programme evidence from italy del monte a and scalera d 2001 the life duration of small firms born within a start up programme evidence from italy reg studies 35 11 21 we argue in this paper that the success of a subsidy programme should not be evaluated by comparing the survival rates of subsidized and non subsidized firms since the purpose of subsidies is to offset a gap with firms that do not need subsidies secondly we seek to identify the main factors avecting the death probability of small firms born within a start up programme to this end we conduct an empirical investigation of the firms supported by law 44 in italy between 1988 and 1997 finding that the amount of capital invested has a negative impact on life duration while the capital labour ratio and the amount of subsidy exert a positive influuence the main result is the unusual negative relationship between size and survival which we interpret in terms of the bias induced by subsidies in favour of larger and riskier firms del monte a et scalera d 200

persistence of initial debt in the long term employment dynamics of new firms this paper investigates whether a firm s future growth is independent of its initial debt structure the non parametric test consists of determining whether the conditional size distribution for firms surviving through early years of life depends upon debt to asset ratio at birth initially i test for initial size dependence in the growth process by applying pakes and ericson 1998 procedure i then test the hypothesis that initial debt to asset ratios are irrelevant to growth of ten year old manufacturing firms i reject the null of independence and find evidence of a non monotonic relationship between age ten conditional size and the initial debt to asset ratio ce texte examine la question a savoir si la croissance future d une firme depend de la structure initiale de sa dette le test non parametrique consiste a determine si la distribution conditionnelle de la taille des firmes qui survivent au cours des premieres annees depend du ratio dette actif a la naissance l auteur teste d abord l independance de la taille initiale et du processus de croissance a l aide de la procedure de pakes et ericson 1998 et ensuite l hypothese que le ratio initial dette actif n est pas pertinent pour expliquer la croissance de firmes manufacturieres qui ont survecu dix ans l hypothese nulle d independance est rejetee et on trouve trace d une relation non monotone entre la taille conditionnelle a dix ans et le ratio initial de la dette sur l actif

the effect of technology spillover on co2 emissions embodied in china australia trade abstract co2 emissions embodied in international trade have drawn wide attention in the academia and national climate negotiations in this study we estimate the embodied co2 emissions in the trade between china and australia using long time series disaggregated sectoral data based on missions embodied in bilateral trade eebt method and analyse the major driving forces for these emissions changes based on structural decomposition analysis sda method the results show that export volume contributed to these embodied co2 emissions increase while emission intensity could offset these co2 emissions increase we further predict embodied co2 emission in sino australia trade under different scenarios and the results indicate that technology spillover can significantly reduce embodied co2 emissions in trade electricity transportation and cement industries have significant potential to reduce carbon emissions in addition we evaluate future carbon reduction potential till 2030 the results in this study can inform decision makers for australia and china to formulate energy conservation and emission reduction policies

farm growth and survival econometric evidence for individual farms in upper austria this article investigates survival and growth of more than 50 000 upper austrian farm households within a maximum likelihood sample selection framework the results suggest that age schooling and sex of the farm operator size of the farm family and off farm employment status as well as initial farm size significantly influence farm growth and survival the present study provides support for the notion of a disappearing middle in the size distribution the process of polarization is closely related to the off farm employment status of farms correcting for sample attrition bias is important when analyzing the performance of part time farms

optimal threats many conflicts ranging from biblical strife to modern superpower confrontations are significantly affected by the threat of retaliation we analyze the policy of tit for tat in a threat game based on chicken in which each player can initially choose any level of preemption or non cooperation if one player is more preemptive than the other the less preemptive player can retaliate if the players preempt at the same level neither can retaliate after these choices the game terminates with the players payoffs based on both the payoffs of chicken and their levels of preemption and retaliation an analysis of nash equilibria shows the deterrence equilibrium neither player preempts but both threaten to retaliate if preempted to be the most compelling solution to this game a player s choice of his strategy associated with this equilibrium renders any level of preemption by his opponent costly deterrence equilibrium strategies entail in some cases more than proportionate threats of retaliation against low levels of preemption and less than proportionate threats against high levels we consider the optimality of such threats in light of existing prescriptions and evidence on different conflicts especially those that occur in the international arena and may involve nuclear threats

back to basics the comanor wilson mes index revisited the present article attempts to investigate the validity of the comanor wilson minimum efficient size mes measure the basic assumption is that firms that have exhausted scale economies are in non increasing returns to scale the same firms are also assumed to have a size greater than mes estimated on sales total turnover employment or fixed assets data envelopment analysis dea is used on a sample of firms in three greek manufacturing industries to classify firms in operation according to increasing or non increasing returns to scale on the basis of the results of the dea input oriented model the mes measure correctly predicts over 85 of the cases a probit model is applied to those cases that are not identically predicted by mes concerning returns to scale results indicate that technical efficiency size and age are the factors that compel mes to yield the same prediction as the dea approach

growth of firms in developing countries evidence from cote d ivoire the paper presents evidence in support of a particular growth process of firms that is consistent with a missing middle in the size distribution of manufacturing firms in african countries firm growth is explained by size and age effects as a result of efficiency exploiting through scale enlargements and learning but is strongly moderated by reputation effects and formal legitimation which facilitate access to output markets and resources complementing the model with data on growth obstacles as perceived by the owners of firms medium sized firms are found to be strongly hurt by insufficient access to infrastructure and financial services

the energy efficiency paradox revisited through a partial observability approach the present paper examines the energy efficiency paradox demonstrated in greek manufacturing firms through a partial observability approach the data set used has resulted from a survey carried out among 161 energy saving technology firm adopters maximum likelihood estimates that arise from an incidental truncation model reveal that the adoption of the energy saving technologies is indeed strongly correlated to the returns of assets that are required in order to undertake the corresponding investments the source of the energy efficiency paradox lies within a wide range of factors policy schemes that aim to increase the adoption rate of energy saving technologies within the field of manufacturing are significantly affected by differences in the size of firms finally mixed policies seem to be more effective than policies that are only capital subsidy or regulation oriented

persistence survival and growth a closer look at 20 years of fast growing firms in austria for survival persistence and growth hifs show a much higher persistence than hgfs the average growth rate after the high growth episode is quite modest for both hifs and hgfs policy implications of the ndings are discussed

an explanation of the life span of new french firms in contrast to previous studies on firm survival which tend to focus on features related to the structure of the firms and their area of activity our aim here is to widen the perspective usually adopted in the field taking into account a larger and more qualitative set of variables among these variables features related to the individual characteristics of the entrepreneur to the context of entrepreneurship and to the insertion in entrepreneurial networks are significant to explain the life span of new firms the empirical material is drawn from two surveys which provide detailed data about a group of new firms created in france in 1994 and closed down before 1997 or still running in 1997 our empirical approach on qualitative data is based on data analysis methods linear discriminant analysis barycentric discriminant analysis analysis of variance according to the characteristics of the entrepreneur the main explanatory factors for the survival of new firms are the fact that they are entrepreneurs who have taken over firms that they have acquired during their previous occupational activity an experience in the same branch of activity and that they experience a successful integration into the entrepreneurial networks these three factors show that the survival of young firms is indirectly conditioned by the existence of an initial custom by the mastery of a job and by the know how in the entrepreneurial function

are high growth firms one hit wonders evidence from sweden most firms do not grow and a small number of high growth firms seem to create most new jobs these firms have therefore received increasing attention among policymakers the question is whether high growth tends to persist we investigate this question using firm level data from sweden during 1997 2008 we find that high growth firms had declining growth rates in the previous 3 year period and their probability of repeating high growth rates was very low thus these are essentially one hit wonders and it is doubtful whether policymakers can improve economic outcomes by targeting them

testing gibrat s law for small young and innovating firms this article analyses whether small young and innovating firms have experienced a greater employment growth than other spanish firms over the period 1990 2000 the study draws upon a sample of 1272 manufacturing firms in which only 967 of the firms survived for the entire ten year period the analyses test gibrat s law both by least squares and by utilizing the procedure proposed by heckman in which a probit survival equation is first estimated to correct for sample selection bias two estimators correcting for selection bias are utilized one that incorporates the inverse mill s ratio and the other that employs maximum likelihood methods all the results reject gibrat s law and support the proposition that small firms have grown larger additionally the results show that old firms grow less than young ones and innovating activity both process and product is a strong positive factor in the firm s survival and its employment growth

the distribution of dairy farm size in poland a markov approach based on information theory this article sets out to analyse the evolution of the dairy farm structure of poland during the post socialist period after focusing on how the farm structure has changed over time an instrumental variable generalized cross entropy estimator is used to develop and estimate a markov model in order to explore how farm structure will probably develop in the coming decade the estimator exploits both sample data and prior information including general and plausible information on farm mobility and structural adjustments based on independent literature next several statistical indicators are computed for farm mobility and for which farms are likely to survive finally milk projections are made and related to policy scenarios the projections show that the number of dairy farms will continue to decline but the number of medium and large farms will increase in the coming decade subsistence dairy farms are expected to leave the sector slowly milk projections show that under the status quo milk quotas w

an assessment of a proposed ets in australia by using the monash green model abstract using the monash green model and a database containing detailed energy sectors this paper evaluates the effects of a proposed emissions trading scheme on the australian economy and the emissions levels the simulation results indicate that the price of carbon permits has to increase from a 4 1 per tonne in 2015 through a 13 1 per tonne in 2020 to a 41 3 per tonne in 2030 to achieve a target of 28 below the 2005 level in 2030 the main buyers of permits would be the agricultural sector black coal electricity sector and brown coal electricity sector compared to the business as usual scenario australia s gdp is projected to be 0 85 lower in 2020 and 1 6 lower in 2030 household welfare measured in terms of equivalent variations will increase due to compensations provided by the government the results also lend strong support towards the transition to renewable energy the stylised model was adapted to inform the results of the full model

development of the electricity environmental policy cge model gtap e powers a case of the carbon tax in south africa abstract a new carbon price mechanism with full emission coverage is developed within the framework of a global computable general equilibrium model gtap e powers to enhance the capacity and accuracy for climate change and energy policy assessment the model developed is then used to examine the potential impacts of the carbon tax in south africa results show that incorporation of non co2 emissions in the model significantly alters the results of which the economy of south africa experiences higher costs compared to the case that only has co2 emissions when more sectors are included in the policy it also puts higher costs on the economy as higher levels of emissions are subject to the carbon tax results also show that south africa only experiences small tradeoffs from introducing the carbon tax in all scenarios that is with a tax rate of 9 15 the country is able to reduce its emission levels by 12 25 15 6 at the costs of real gdp reduction by 1 17 1 59 fossil based industrial sectors are particularly worst off while clean and renewable energy sectors strongly expand their production the results indicate that south africa is likely to move to a low carbon and sustainable economy with such a policy

recent trends in aggregate concentration in the united kingdom economy the extent to which large corporations dominate economic activity and the design of ap propriate policies towards them have been the subject of an extensive debate in the uk in recent years trends in concentration in manufacturing have played an important role in fuelling this debate recent studies however suggest that the unprecedented increases in overall or aggregate concentration in manufacturing which took place in the 1960s have not been repeated in the 1970s on the contrary concentration seems to have stabilised or fallen in the first half of the 1970s 1 in our view such estimates are not necessarily a good guide to the size and role of big business in the economy as a whole the discussion needs to be extended beyond the confines of manufacturing non manufacturing activity in the uk in the 1970s accounted for around 70 of gdp and over two thirds of employ ment 2 many of the largest uk companies including the oil companies the clearing banks and insurers and major retailers operate principally outside manufacturing and many of those within manufacturing have substantial non manufacturing interests as their consoli dated annual accounts reveal 3 mergers provide a more dramatic indication of this pattern in 1983 bat industries one of the ten largest industrial companies in the uk made a takeover bid for eagle star the sixth largest insurer whilst this may be an extreme example it is certainly the case that in the 1970s conglomerate mergers have generally become of far greater relative importance than they were in the 1960s 4 our object in this paper is therefore to provide recent estimates of aggregate concen tration which extend beyond manufacturing industry and cover the years 1968 82 this involves major problems because there are no official statistics to guide us we have there fore had to use a variety of published sources principally based on company accounts

generalising gibrat using chinese evidence founded on fieldwork this paper reports on determinants of small firm growth and survival using fieldwork evidence collected by face to face and telephone interviews it extends the basic size age model to a comprehensive growth model with two types of additional explanatory variables firm specific and business environmental estimation is by log linear regression on chinese cross section data with corrections for sample selection bias and heteroskedasticity our results from the comprehensive model highlight the importance of location choice and customer orientation for the growth of chinese private firms

poverty and distributional effects of a carbon tax in mexico abstract mexico recently declared ambitious goals in reducing domestic co2 emissions and introduced a carbon tax in 2014 although negative effects on household welfare and related poverty measures are widely discussed as possible consequences empirical evidence is missing we try to fill this gap by simulating an input output model coupled with household survey data to examine the welfare effects of different carbon tax rates over the income distribution the currently effective tax rate is small and has negligible effects on household welfare higher simulated tax rates maintaining the current tax base show a slight progressivity but welfare losses remain moderate welfare losses regressivity and poverty rise more with widening the tax base towards natural gas and the other greenhouse gases methane ch4 and nitrous oxide n2o mainly through food price increases for a complete analysis of the policy we simulate a redistribution of calculated tax revenues and find that the resulting effects become highly progressive also for high rates wider tax bases and even in the absence of perfect targeting of social welfare programs

the small the young and the productive determinants of manufacturing firm growth in ethiopia abstract this study examines the relationships between firm growth and firm size age and labor productivity using annual census based panel data on ethiopian manufacturing firms the study explicitly addresses the ongoing statistical concerns in firm growth models such as sample censoring regression to the mean and unobserved heterogeneity our empirical results indicate that firm growth decreases with size smaller firms have faster rates of growth than larger firms even after compensating for their higher attrition rates the negative relation between age and growth predicted by the learning model is found to apply only to younger firms labor productivity affects firm growth positively which indicates that there is a market selection process at work during the period of economic reforms in ethiopia

the environmental and economic impact of the carbon tax in australia to fulfil its emission reduction target pledged in the copenhagen accord the australian government has determined to introduce a carbon tax from july 1st 2012 this paper simulates the effects on the environment and on the economy of a carbon tax of a 23 per tonne of carbon dioxide proposed by the government with and without a compensation policy we employ a computable general equilibrium model with an environmentally extended social accounting matrix according to the simulation results the carbon tax can cut emissions effectively but will cause a mild economic contraction because the price signal is intact the proposed compensation plan has little impact on emission cuts while significantly mitigating the negative effect of a carbon tax on the economy

the relationship between firm growth size and age estimates for 100 manufacturing industries this study uses a sample of all firms operating in 100 manufacturing industries to examine some aspects of firm dynamics it finds that firm growth the variability of firm growth and the probability that a firm will fail decrease with firm age it also finds that firm growth decreases at a diminishing rate with firm size even after controlling for the exit of slow growing firms from the sample gibrat s law therefore fails although the severity of the failure decreases with firm size copyright 1987 by blackwell publishing ltd

age size growth and survival uk companies in the 1980s this paper examines growth and survival amongst quoted and unquoted u k companies in the period 1975 85 and compares the results with earlier u k and u s studies an examination of death rates shows that smaller companies had higher death rates but the largest and smallest companies were least vulnerable to takeover careful attention is therefore paid to problems of sample selection bias it is shown that smaller companies grew faster than larger companies that gibrat s law does not hold amongst smaller firms that age is negatively related to growth and that these results are not an artifact of sample selection bias copyright 1994 by blackwell publishing ltd

stability of the money demand function in asian developing countries previous studies that estimated the money demand function in asian developing countries either employed traditional estimation techniques or recently popularized cointegration technique while the first group suffers from spurious regression problems the second group interpreted their finding of cointegration as a sign of stability of estimated parameters this study after incorporating the cusum and cusumsq tests into cointegration analysis shows that in some asian countries even though real m1 or m2 monetary aggregates are cointegrated with their determinants the estimated parameters are unstable

on growth drivers of high tech start ups exploring the role of founders human capital and venture capital abstract in this paper we jointly analyze the effects of the human capital of founders and access to venture capital vc financing on the growth of 439 italian new technology based firms ntbfs we rely on econometric models that control for survivorship bias and the endogeneity of vc financing as to non vc backed firms the competence based argument that the capabilities of ntbfs coincide with founders skills is confirmed nonetheless once a ntbf obtains vc this coincidence vanishes pointing to the coach function performed by vc investors conversely the view that sees the scout function as the main task performed by vc investors is not supported

impact of an emissions trading scheme on australian households a computable general equilibrium analysis abstract following the international commitment to tackle climate change issues many countries have introduced climate change policies to reduce emission levels australia also expects to follow the international pathways to implement a climate change policy to curb its greenhouse gas emissions in this context the former labor government in australia intended to switch its carbon tax policy to an emissions trading scheme ets after 2 years of its initial operation to achieve an emission target of 5 per cent below the 2000 level by 2020 by employing a computable general equilibrium model and a social accounting matrix database this article analyses the potential impacts of an ets with various revenue recycling options on australian households results show that an emission permit price of a 20 per tonne of co2 e would help australia to achieve the 2020 emission reduction target this permit price is likely to have a small contraction in australia s real gdp i e about 0 3 per cent and in real household consumption i e about 0 19 per cent the price of electricity is projected to increase by 13 per cent the revenue recycling options seem to create an improvement in the macro economy and there is a trade off between economic efficiency and equity in the australian economy with compensations the personal income tax reduction policy results in an economic efficiency with a positive change in real aggregate household consumption whereas providing an equal lump sum transfer brings benefits equally for all household groups increased government transfers based on recipients current pension and allowance rates generate more welfare gains for middle income household groups

surviving the crisis foreign multinationals vs domestic firms starting from the observation that all firms in ireland foreign and domestic in manufacturing and services industries were hit by the crisis the paper asks whether there is a difference in the behaviour of foreign and domestic firms one hypothesis is that foreign multinationals are less linked into the irish economy so more likely to leave once the economy is hit by a negative shock the paper discusses background hypotheses before giving empirical evidence from firstly aggregate data and secondly firm level observations the analysis of the latter suggests that foreign firms are not more likely to leave during the crisis than irish firms some policy conclusions are offered in the paper

the growth of us credit unions abstract the growth of us credit unions during the 1990s is investigated empirically using univariate and multivariate cross sectional and panel estimation techniques univariate tests of the law of proportionate effect suggest that in general large credit unions grew faster than their smaller counterparts on average credit unions with above average growth in one period tended to experience below average growth in the next smaller credit unions tended to have more variable growth than large ones while credit unions share a common co operative philosophy they differ in terms of age profile scope for membership growth charter type and financial structure and performance in estimations of a multivariate growth model most of these characteristics are found to have a significant influence on the size growth relationship while large state chartered credit unions grew faster than their smaller counterparts the reverse was true for federally chartered credit unions in general if larger credit unions grew faster than smaller ones they tended to do so for specific reasons because their charters were less restrictive because they were more efficient or because they had a financial structure that was more conducive to growth therefore credit union growth was not random but highly systematic

the role of linkages in firm performance evidence from southern italy abstract this paper estimates the probability of success of post entry performance of new firms using survey data from a group of southern italian small firms several factors involving inter firm linkages contribute to success especially production for order and subcontracting the empirical investigation supports hirschman s idea on the industrialization process and positive assessments of the downsizing phenomenon in italy

the cross sectional dynamics of the us business cycle 1950 1999 abstract modern interest in business cycles has focussed on the co movements and correlations in the major macroeconomic aggregates in this paper we offer another dimension to business cycle analysis which looks at the time series of cross sectional distributions of the growth rates of sales by us quoted companies from 1950 to 1999 we detect correlations between aggregate business cycle fluctuations and the higher moments of the cross sectional distribution we find a significant negative correlation between the rate of growth of gdp and the cross sectional variance and skewness of growth rates of sales on the other hand there is positive correlation at business cycle frequencies with kurtosis in order to explore this further we turn to the dynamic evolution of firms and analyse the sensitivity of growth rates to aggregate shocks conditioning on firm size the results suggest that despite considerable heterogeneity macroeconomic shocks have pervasive effects that are however more pronounced for firms in the middle range of growth this has implications for both macro and industrial economics

small firms in economic theory this is the fourth of a series of critical survey articles the aim of the series is to report on recent developments to provide an assessment of alternative approaches and to suggest lines of future inquiry it is intended that the articles will be accessible not only to other academic researchers but also to students and others more practically involved in the economy future survey articles will include warren samuels on institutional economics and philip arestis on post keynesian

on the growth of foreign affiliates multinational plant networks joint ventures and flexibility we take a flexibility perspective to analyse employment growth in a large sample of japanese manufacturing affiliates in nine asian countries during the years leading up to and into the asian financial crisis 1995 1999 we find that joint ventures are less flexible than wholly owned affiliates in responding to changing environmental conditions in the focal country and underperform in high growth environments multinational enterprises mnes use the flexibility created by their multinational plant network to adjust affiliate employment in response to labour cost changes in other countries in which they operate plants however no evidence was found that the presence of joint ventures in multinational plant networks reduces this network flexibility our findings suggest that more research is needed on the heterogeneous responses of mnes and their affiliates to changing economic environments

simulation of concentration development from modified gibrat growth entry exit processes gibrat s law is augmented to produce a more general stochastic model of concentration consisting of growth entry and exit processes empirical facts on growth entry and exit reported elsewhere are employed to calibrate the model which is then repeatedly simulated generating concentration data for 280 hypothetical industries grouped under fourteen types the simulated data are used to investigate the importance of growth entry and exit in shaping concentration development most important is systematic firm level growth entry and exit are much less significant as is random growth variability which features prominently in previous stochastic models parallels with previous interindustry research are drawn copyright 1995 by blackwell publishing ltd

high growth entrepreneurial firms in africa a quantile regression approach this article analyses the growth performance of a large set of entrepreneurial firms in ten manufacturing sectors of 11 sub saharan african countries the focus of the article is on identifying those entrepreneurs attributes and firm characteristics that tend to generate a significant number of high growth firms in these countries to this end we use a quantile regression which provides a more complete estimation of the growth distribution of firms conditional on different attributes the results indicate that firms that engage in product innovation have their own transport means and are connected to the internet through their own website are especially characterized by higher growth rates and also display a distribution of growth rates skewed to the right hosting a higher number of high growth firms the effect of the last two variables which relate to distance bridging modes of infrastructure points to the self reinforcing growth effects they generate in creating wider input and output markets education raises growth opportunities by affecting the lower quantiles but it does not appear to influence the upper quantiles the estimated conditional growth distributions for the technology intensive machinery and electronics sectors show more extreme tails and a lower mean in comparison to the traditional industries indicating the more risky nature of doing business in these industries

carbon taxation in russia prospects for a double dividend and improved energy efficiency russia is not only one of the world s major sources of carbon based energy coal oil and gas but is also one the most intensive users of energy furthermore russia accounts for a disproportionately large share of global carbon dioxide emissions some 5 to 6 of global carbon dioxide emissions eia 2011a it has been estimated world bank 2008 that russia could reduce its use of primary energy use by 45 with consequent economic and environmental benefits high energy and carbon intensity of the russia economy is inter alia explained by low energy prices due to high export taxes as well as administrative regulation of domestic prices of gas and electricity and low environmental taxes carbon taxes are one such pigouvian tax and they would address concerns on several fronts simultaneously in the short to medium term they would inter alia lead to lower ghg emissions and encourage the diffusion of more energy efficient technologies in the longer term the increased cost of energy inputs is expected to induce technological progress in this analysis the macroeconomic and sectoral effects of carbon taxes on the russia economy are examined this analysis addresses the following objectives i to test the double dividend hypothesis under perfect and imperfect competition in output markets to analyse ii the incidence of carbon taxes iii impacts on sectoral competitiveness iv effects on income equity and v interactions of carbon taxes with other taxes a computable single country multi sector comparative static cge model is employed russland verfugt nicht nur uber einen der grosten vorrate an kohlenstoffbasierter energie wie kohle rohol und gas sondern ist auch einer der grosten energieverbraucher daruber hinaus ist russland fur einen uberproportional grosen anteil von kohlendioxid emission etwa 5 bis 6 der weltweiten kohlendioxidemission verantwortlich mit der einfuhrung einer kohlendioxidsteuer konnten gleichzeitig unterschiedliche wirkungen erzielt werden kurz und mittelfristig wurden kohlenstoffsteuern sowohl zu einer reduzierung von treibhausgasemissionen als auch zur einfuhrung von energieeffizienteren technologien fuhren langfristig wird erwartet dass hohe energiekosten den anreiz zur entwicklung und zur investition in energiesparenden technischen fortschritt erhohen die vorliegende arbeit analysiert und bewertet die makrookonomischen und sektoralen auswirkungen einer einfuhrung von kohlenstoffsteuern auf die russische wirtschaft die ziele der arbeit bestehen darin die hypothese der doppelten dividende fur den fall des vollkommenen und des unvollkommenen wettbewerbs auf gutermarkten zu uberprufen und die inzidenz einer kohlenstoffsteuer ihre auswirkungen auf die sektorale wettbewerbsfahigkeit ihre auswirkungen auf die einkommensverteilung und die interaktion von kohlenstoffsteuern mit anderen steuern zu analysieren und zu bewerten als methodischer ansatz wurde ein single country und multi sektor model gewahlt

seller concentration the technological explanation and demand uncertainty the level of seller concentration in an industry depends on two characteristics of the size distribution of the firms concerned their number and the inequality of their sizes acknowledging these two dimensions the aim of this paper is to construct a unified theoretical framework capable of shedding some light on the economic forces which determine the degree of concentration it builds on the analysis of two schools of thought within the existing literature the first of these we shall label the technological explanation of concentration since it emphasises the role of the cost curve in particular the minimum efficient scale of production and barriers to the entry of new firms implicitly this attaches most importance to the firm number component of concentration the second school includes the various stochastic models of firm growth these models have demonstrated the influence on concentration of what is sometimes called luck or more deterministically those factors which might influence the spread of growth rates of firms within an industry to that extent these models emphasise the other component of concentration size inequalities we see our present contribution as an attempt to build a bridge between these two approaches we develop the well known simon and bonini i958 stochastic growth model in such a way as to provide a formal statement of the technological explanation and then discuss various ways of deepening the economic content of their original contribution section i provides a brief resume of the technological explanation and section ii describes the salient features of the simon and bonini model it goes on to show how this model can be used to disentangle a mathematical relationship between the concentration ratio and i minimum efficient scale ii the share of sub optimal firms and iii the degree of firm size inequalities this relationship is tested with some success using i968 uk census data an important conclusion of the simon and bonini model is that firm size inequalities depend crucially on the probability of entry by new firms section iii considers how this proposition may be invested with more economic content the discussion is couched at a fairly general level but in the appendix we suggest a specific model which explains entry as a consequence of the fact that incumbent firms typically operate in a world of demand uncertainty where entry deterrence may be too costly it provides specific economic predictions

the impact of an ets on the australian energy sector an integrated cge and electricity modelling approach this paper utilises a new computable general equilibrium cge model which integrates an electricity supply model to gauge the effects of a national emissions trading scheme ets on the australian energy sector and the broader economy the modelling results show that an ets can reduce emissions effectively and with a relatively small impact on the overall economy but the impact of the ets on individual sectors varies wind electricity generation is projected to benefit greatly brown coal electricity and gas electricity are expected to be adversely affected substantially somewhat surprisingly the impact on black coal electricity is negative but relatively small

distributional impacts of carbon pricing a general equilibrium approach with micro data for households article i nfo many policies to limit greenhouse gas emissions have at their core efforts to put a price on carbon emissions carbon pricing impacts households both by raising the cost of carbon intensive products and by changing factor prices a complete analysis requires taking both effects into account the impact of carbon pricing is determined by heterogeneity in household spending patterns across income groups as well as heterogeneity in factor income patterns across income groups it is also affected by precise formulation of the policy how is the revenue from carbon pricing distributed as well as the treatment of other government policies e g the treatment of transfer payments what is often neglected in analyses of policy is the heterogeneity of impacts across households even within income or regional groups in this paper we incorporate 15 588 households from the u s consumer and expenditure survey data as individual agents in a comparative static general equilibrium framework these households are represented within the mit usrep model a detailed general equilibrium model of the u s economy in particular we categorize households by full household income factor income as well as transfer income and apply various measures of lifetime income to distinguish households that are temporarily low income e g retired households drawing down their financial assets from permanently low income households we also provide detailed within group distributional measures of burden impacts from various policy scenarios

tradeable carbon permit auctions how and why to auction not grandfather abstract an auction of carbon permits is the best way to achieve domestic carbon caps designed to limit global climate change to minimize administrative costs permits would be required at the level of oil refineries natural gas pipe lines natural gas liquid sellers and coal processing plants to maximize liquidity in secondary markets permits would be fully tradable and bankable the government would conduct quarterly auctions a standard ascending clock auction in which price is gradually raised until there is no excess demand would provide reliable price discovery an auction is preferred to grandfathering giving companies permits based on historical output or emissions because it allows reduced tax distortions provides more flexibility in distribution of costs provides greater incentives for innovation and reduces the need for politically contentious arguments over the allocation of rents

how to set the proper level of carbon tax in the context of chinese construction sector a cge analysis abstract under global warming and severe environmental problems the paris agreement urges china to accelerate the pace of the low carbon economy improving the energy efficiency of the construction sector may be an important way to reduce co2 emissions as a reasonable energy policy instrument a carbon tax can effectively improve energy efficiency and reduce co2 emissions in this study a dynamic computable general equilibrium model is developed to explore the possible impacts of different carbon tax conditions on the energy consumption of the construction sector and the macroeconomy of china results show that the appropriate carbon tax is 60 rmb t which cannot only achieve the emission reduction target but also minimize the negative impact on the macroeconomy however the proper level of the carbon tax varies by building stage under the proper carbon tax level the peak of carbon emissions could be reached in 2025 the main purpose of this paper is to provide a theoretical basis for the government in formulating different energy policies

the survival and growth of new establishments in sweden 1987 1995 the aim of the study is to examine the survival of new establishments and to identify factors affecting their survival probability and their employment growth this study uses a unique data set on all new establishments that were created in sweden 1987 and 1988 with the exception of the construction industry the results show among others that i new establishments face a high risk of closing down ii the probability of establishment survival increases with the age and size of the establishment iii variables that are assumed to measure access to resources being a part of a multi unit firm and being new due to merger or dispersal have a positive effect on survival iv the number of employees at the start up year has a negative effect on the employment growth and v demographic and educational factors are important in explaining survival and growth

short run returns to scale farm size and economic efficiency this paper analyzes the effects of returns to scale farm size technical allocative and scale inefficiencies on the profitability of utah dairy farms it derives the conditions necessary to compare the profitability of farms within and between different size classifications as small medium and large some comparative static results regarding increases in input prices and a decrease or withdrawal of price support on profitability of small medium and large farms are presented copyright 1993 by mit press

firm growth and laplace distribution the importance of large jumps abstract recent empirical studies have shown that firm growth rate distribution is not gaussian but closely follows a laplace distribution this robust feature of the growth rate distribution challenges existing models based on gibrat s model because it predicts a gaussian distribution first we analyze more than 100 000 japanese firms and empirically show that the laplace shape can be observed for the japanese firms then by using the theory of stochastic processes we theoretically show that the absence of jumps causes the discrepancy between gibrat s model and the laplace shape in particular based on the laplace shape and the law of proportionate effect we show that the firm growth process is a jump process in other words firm growth cannot be explained by the consequence of many small shocks but is determined by a few large jumps the widely observed laplace distribution reflects this jump property of firm growth dynamics

optimal carbon allowance price in china s carbon emission trading system perspective from the multi sectoral marginal abatement cost abstract china s carbon emission trading system ets was officially launched at the end of 2017 to further promote carbon emissions mitigation in the ets the carbon price is the key factor determining whether the emission reduction target can be achieved the optimal carbon price is the smallest marginal abatement cost that can achieve the emission reduction target this study simulates the marginal abatement cost curves of different sectors in china s ets and calculate the optimal carbon price of sector coverage scenarios based on the criteria that involve eight sectors in turn the results show that the marginal abatement cost decreases with increasing sector involvement the optimal carbon price to achieve the two intensity targets at the same time is between 345 yuan ton and 1140 yuan ton from the sectoral perspective the power sector undertakes the largest emission reduction while the transportation sector is responsible for smaller emission reduction china s ets will cause gdp losses from 1 63 to 2 27 compared with the bau scenario but it can achieve co2 reduction from 9 56 to 10 13

when is gibrat s law a law the purpose of this article 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 five digit nace industries in sweden during 1998 2004 the results reject gibrat s law on an aggregate level since small firms grow faster than large firms however gibrat s law is confirmed about as often as it is rejected when industry specific regressions are estimated it is also found that the industry context e g minimum efficient scale market concentration rate and number of young firms in the industry matters for whether gibrat s law is rejected or not

entrepreneurial growth the role of international knowledge acquisition as moderated by firm age in line with repeated recent calls for research on specific forms of growth rather than on an undifferentiated notion of total growth our study contributes to the understanding of entrepreneurial growth by this we mean growth through expansion into new geographic markets and or via the introduction of new products or services building on penrose s theory of the growth of the firm and on the research streams she has in part inspired we investigate the impact of knowledge acquisition from international markets on entrepreneurial growth both at home and abroad we further suggest that the effects of international knowledge acquisition on entrepreneurial growth will vary with firm age utilizing longitudinal data on 138 small and medium sized enterprises smes we find that the acquisition of knowledge from international markets fuels growth through market development and that this effect is stronger for international expansion than domestic expansion our results also show that firm age negatively moderates the relationship between international knowledge acquisition and entrepreneurial growth via the introduction of new products or services specifically international knowledge acquisition has a positive effect on growth via new products services development in young firms but a negative effect in mature firms we assume this reflects changes over time in how international knowledge is managed

gibrat s law redux think profitability instead of growth we argue that firm profitability can be conveniently characterized by one and the same diffusion process for all firms akin to gibrat s seminal idea of a common stochastic description for the dynamics of firm growth here we show that the diffusion of profit rates applies across all surviving corporations irrespective of their size or industry which is not true for growth rates the diffusion process is empirically consistent with both the cross sectional distribution of profit rates and the individual time series of corporate profit rates leading to the notion of a statistical equilibrium this has stark and unexpected implications for our understanding of individual destinies since the model and data suggest that idiosyncratic efforts have no impact on the aggregate distributional outcome instead idiosyncratic efforts merely affect the individual persistence of abnormal profits from the system wide norm put differently corporations have to participate in the same game and can merely choose the speed at which they play it but they cannot bend the rules

works councils and employment growth in german establishments using data from german manufacturing establishments this article examines the relationship between works councils and employment growth taking the endogeneity of councils into account the estimates show a positive growth effect of works councils this suggests that the performance enhancing voice role of german works councils dominates their monopoly role moreover the findings of this study support the hypothesis that workers are more likely to implement a council to protect their quasi rents when the establishment is facing a long term crisis copyright the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

rational retaliation superpower response to crisis 1948 1979 using a modified version of chicken referred to as the threat game brams and kilgour 1987a 1987b have developed a theoretical model of rational retaliation in superpower crises they derive explicit thresholds for sufficient retaliation against provocations to deter them in the first place when the retaliating move meets or is more coercive than a threshold value it is rational for the adversaries to prefer to desist from conflict whereas a response that is too cooperative will not provide the same incentive

the impact of international standards certification on the performance of firms in less developed countries this paper examines the effects of international standards certification isc on both productivity and sales performance for firms from a wide set of countries exhibiting different degrees of institutional development against a large dataset of manufacturing firms operating in 59 countries we find that isc raises productivity and sales performance of firms through efficiency gains and quality signaling with the effects being larger in countries where market supporting institutions are weak the largest gain in performance comes from direct productivity improvements helping firms to climb the technological ladder and closing the productivity gap with firms based in developed countries

threat escalation and crisis stability a game theoretic analysis we develop a model of crisis stability based on a deterrence game players are assumed to be able to choose any level of initial cooperation or noncooperation the more cooperative player if there is one may then choose to retaliate in a crisis players are assumed to have escalated their conflict and desire to stabilize it before it explodes players can by threatening their opponent stabilize the new status quo in addition points of threat escalation are identified at which neither player can prevent the opponent from escalating further without threatening the opponent more severely than before the crisis erupted thereby heating up an already tense situation crisis stabilization is aided by being close to the full cooperation position though paradoxically both players may benefit from having created a crisis that only escalating threats may resolve we discuss ways of avoiding threat escalation and the increased risk of war that it entails especially in conflicts between the superpowers

determinants of firm start up size an application of quantile regression for ireland in this paper we provide empirical evidence on the determinants of firm start up size using data for the manufacturing sector in ireland and compare our results with recent findings for portuguese manufacturing industries mata and machado 1996 to allow for firm heterogeneity between firm entrants we use quantile regression techniques for our empirical estimation we find that the determinants of start up size differ in their importance for small and large scale entrants in particular industry size and industry growth seem to affect large scale entrants only

long lasting bank relationships and growth of firms a puzzling but consistent result in the empirical literature on banking is that firms with close bank ties do not grow faster than bank independent firms in this paper we reconsider the link between relationship lending and firm growth distinguishing firms by size and expansion contraction conditions the idea is that the beneficial effects of relationship lending on information asymmetries can be compensated by other negative capture risk and externality effects which make relational banks reluctant to support long term growth projects of client firms and that the strength of these compensating effects varies with firm size and health status we explore the influence of long lasting bank relationships on employment and asset growth of a large sample of italian firms the main finding is that relationship lending hampers the efforts of small firms to increase their size while it mitigates the negative growth of troubled medium large enterprises

reconciling quantile autoregressions of firm size and variance size scaling the aim of this paper is to understand what economic mechanisms may cause the law of proportionate effect to break down for fast growing and shrinking firms recent evidence has highlighted that the first order coefficients of quantile auto regression of firm size decline across quantiles our theoretical results show that negative variance size scaling is sufficient to yield a decline in quantile auto regression coefficients if firm log size is laplace distributed conditional on size one period ahead however it is sufficient only for declining auto regression coefficients for fast growing firms under asymmetric laplace conditional log size if skewness is decreasing with size in other words if the growth of large firms is less dispersed and more left skewed size is a disadvantage for the growth of fast growers but not necessarily an advantage for fast decliners thus size related determinants of negative growth skewness such as diseconomies of growth market power and managerial attention issues impact on how the lpe is violated using data on dutch manufacturing companies from the business register of enterprises observed between 1994 and 2004 our empirical estimates of quantile regression models confirm the evidence of declining quantile regression coefficients for small medium firms 20 199 employees mainly in the right most quantiles and for the same subsample we find that growth rates variance and skewness are decreasing with size the theoretical propositions of the paper are thus corroborated

the environmental and economic impact of the emissions trading scheme ets in vietnam abstract this study aims to fill a gap in the literature by examining the impacts of an emissions trading scheme ets in vietnam as the policy has been discussed for a decade in the country but the likely impacts on the economy and different sectors are still unidentified the simulations are carried out in a global energy computable general equilibrium cge model an extension of the gtap e model which treats vietnam as a country region results show that restricting the number of industrial sectors in the emissions trading market substantially affects the country s economy with a decline in real gdp by 4 57 however the country experiences much smaller adverse impacts e g real gdp declines by 1 78 when all industries participate in the emissions trading market in either case of the ets design the coal mining manufacturing transportation and electricity sectors are highly adversely affected however the crude oil and natural gas extraction sectors would experience expansion in their production levels due to substitutions for coal in general under the policy the emission levels from burning fossil fuels decline at significant rates particularly from the electricity generation sector

age order of entry strategic orientation and organizational performance abstract this paper proposes an empirical test of several hypotheses linking age order of entry and strategic orientations to a firm s performance three strategies are defined cost leadership strategy innovative differentiation and marketing differentiation the aim is to show that the impact on performance of both age and each of the three strategic orientations may differ according to a firm s order of entry into an industry following lieberman and montgomery s 1998 evaluation of their major contribution on first mover advantage we emphasize three points first we develop and test hypotheses related to early and late followers strategic orientations broadening the scope of traditional studies on pioneers second the model combines the dimensions of a firm s age order of entry and strategic orientations as well as industry conditions stage of the industry environmental unpredictability and technology diffusion to establish a contingent model of performance analysis finally the empirical study deals chiefly with organizational performance and not market share which is considered a typical advantage accruing to pioneers in addition the scope of the study 582 french manufacturing firms provides the means to fill a void in empirical studies because it is a broad cross sectional test on non u s data the firms are mainly private small to medium sized and single or dominant business firms therefore our assumptions must be understood as particularly applicable to this type of firm the results reveal important lessons for practitioners first we did not find a first mover advantage in terms of organizational performance in addition pioneers organizational performance is enhanced by the cost leader strategy contrary to our assumption emphasizing innovative differentiation for these firms second early followers performance benefits from innovative differentiation and marketing differentiation finally late entrants developing a cost leader strategy have a significantly higher performance all groups considered late followers are the firms most sensitive to environmental uncertainty and age effects our study clarifies the impact of a firm s age and strategic orientations on its performance depending on the firm s order of entry the implications of these results are particularly relevant for practitioners and entrepreneurs first a cost leadership strategy seems to be a guarantee for a pioneer to increase its organizational performance new ventures should therefore take into consideration the fact that newness and innovative differentiation might not be the best strategic orientations for high performance in the long run second as a second mover however developing a superior product and being able to market it efficiently appear to be the enhancing factors of firm performance third for both pioneers and early followers age does not significantly reduce their performance however the longer a firm waits before entering the greater is the negative effect of age on its performance this is due to the difficulty of resisting competitive erosion because pioneers and early followers drive the changes in the industry the identification of these effects should help managers and stakeholders to make more effective entry decisions to sustain a firm s advantage leading to better performance and higher probability of survival

size distribution and growth in a sample of illinois cash grain farms falling agricultural incomes declining exports and emerging biotechnologies have rekindled concern over farm structure and the viability of the medium sized often identified as the family farm see stanton 1984 for a comprehensive discussion of farm structure issues recent studies by edwards smith and patterson zulauf and the office of technology assessment ota examine the changing nature of the size distribution of u s farms gardner and pope and also leiby and sumner investigate forces affecting farm growth these studies are difficult to compare because of differences in models time periods and size measures used in empirical analyses for example a comparison of the ota and the edwards smith and patterson studies leads to very different views of farm sector structure in 2000 the ota results based on analysis of deflated gross value of farm income from 1969 to 1982 suggest a movement towards a bimodal distribution of very small and very large farms in contrast the usda study using acreage to measure farm size over a shorter period 1974 to 1978 predicts a more stable distribution similar to today s interpretation of these results is complicated by the difficulty of defining farm size for a heterogenous set of multiple enterprise farms the limited range of categories used to describe farm growth and the lack of microlevel evidence to corroborate findings based on aggregate agricultural census data the purpose of this analysis is to assess evidence of change in the size distribution of a sample of 161 illinois cash grain farms over the past decade three issues are addressed in the empirical investigation markov transition probability matrices are estimated first to investigate changes in distribution of the sample over the period 1976 to 1985 second we consider whether the results of this analysis and our predictions of future farm structure are invariant with respect to the measure of size used third discriminant analysis is applied to identify factors associated with change in farm size

farm size and growth in canada in this paper we empirically examine the relationship between farm size and growth in canada over the period 1966 81 the analysis is undertaken by testing gibrat s law of proportionate effect gibrat offered the hypothesis that the percentage growth rates of firms are independent of their initial size thus growth is a purely stochastic process that arises from the cumulative effect of the random operation of a multitude of forces acting independently of each other an important outcome of models based on gibrat s law is that the stochastic process results in a size distribution of firms which is skewed and not unlike the size distribution actually observed in particular it is well known that depending on the precise formulation the operation of gibrat s law leads to a skewed size distribution which is either log normal prais or pareto steindl ijiri and simon although it is difficult to determine the exact form of observed size distributions it is generally agreed that either of the above provides a reasonable approximation to reality depending on the industry or sector being observed by contrast a deterministic model of firm growth based strictly on standard cost theory either predicts the facts incorrectly or it makes no prediction at all ijiri and simon p 10 although there are models combining cost theory with assumptions about the adjustment process which result in skewed size distributions e g lucas the testing of gibrat s law remains as an important point of departure for the analysis of firm growth an additional feature of models based on

aviation and the eu emissions trading scheme lessons learned from previous emissions trading schemes designing an emissions trading scheme requires in depth knowledge regarding several aspects this paper attempts to clarify some important design points of the forthcoming emissions trading scheme

size growth and survival in the upper austrian farm sector this paper investigates the evolution of the size distribution of more than 40 000 farms in the upper austrian farm sector over the period 1980 90 using gibrat s law as our point of departure we find that smaller farms grow much faster towards some minimum efficient scale of production than farms at or above this threshold size we furthermore find evidence for the existence of two separate centres of attraction of farm size supporting the notion of a disappearing middle and the emergence of a bimodal structure of farm sizes correcting for size related attrition bias had very little effect on our results

china s income gap and inequality under clean energy transformation a cge model assessment abstract to achieve nationally determined contribution ndc targets china has developed a series of low carbon development plans among them the clean energy transformation is very crucial this study evaluates the impact of a set of policies including the development of renewable energy upgrading heavy industry and energy efficiency improvement on china s income gap between 2012 and 2050 a dynamic computable general equilibrium cge model with detailed representations of economic activity an upgraded labor market and disaggregated labor types based on statistical and survey data is used our research provides support for the necessity of low carbon policies to achieve ndc targets results show some key findings first low carbon policies have the greatest impact on employment across all energy industries with negative impacts in most traditional energy sectors and positive impacts in most renewable power sectors second labor will continue to migrate from rural to urban areas with the transformation of the economic structure and the urbanization rate will further increase reaching a maximum of around 70 the reduction of the rural population will bring new opportunities for the modernization of agriculture increasing the income of rural residents and realizing the equitable development between urban and rural areas third the income gap among urban residents will widen due to the different level of labor demand for employees with different education levels

the welfare effects and the distributive impact of carbon taxation on italian households in this work the welfare effects and the distributive impact on italian households of the italian carbon tax are calculated the carbon tax has been introduced in italy at the beginning of 1999 asking for smooth increases over a number of years in the prices of most fossil fuels its welfare effects have been calculated using true cost of living index numbers and the compensating variation the parameters have been obtained through estimation of a complete almost ideal demand system using households data from 1985 to 1996 the welfare loss turns out to be quite substantial and affects italian households in a non negligible way but the distribution of welfare losses across different levels of total monthly expenditures does not allow sustaining the regressivity of carbon taxation as the effect becomes bigger as we move up the income distribution this evidence might encourage the use of carbon taxes at least in the transport sector as cost effective instruments of environmental policy especially after the ratification of the kyoto protocol on climate change

racial and gender discrimination in the micro firms credit market evidence from trinidad and tobago this paper examines the market for loans from banks to micro and small enterprises in trinidad and tobago it tests for the presence of racial and gender discrimination it takes the reported refusal to grant loans to groups when all other indicators of credit worthiness are taken into account as evidence of discrimination the paper distinguishes between application and denial rates it finds that once all other indicators of credit worthiness are taken into account neither application nor denial rates differ significantly by gender reported denial rates are however higher for africans compared with other ethnic groups implying the possible presence of discrimination

employment and smes during crises the persistent increasing duration of unemployment has become an issue during economic crises although lay offs at large firms normally make headlines during crises we still know little about the potential impact of firm size on adjustment behavior in a crisis we studied effects of firm size on employment growth during economic slowdowns using a rich microeconomic database for the 1988 2007 period in portuguese manufacturing industry the results show that economic downturns affect firm growth negatively this negative effect is found to be higher for larger firms both during and immediately following crisis periods small and medium sized enterprises smes emerge as potential stabilizers in downturn periods however larger firms seem to be able to quickly recover from downturn periods our results contribute to the scarce literature and to the understanding of the portuguese case where many smes secure most jobs these first results may be useful because smes play a determinant role in other european union economies

sunk costs firm size and firm growth for several decades the conventional wisdom has been that expected firm growth rates are independent of firm size a property known as gibrat s law however recent empirical work has found a negative relation between firm growth and firm size this paper provides a theoretical explanation for this negative relation in a model of new firm growth where capacity and technology choices involve some degree of sunkness additional empirical implications of the theory of sunk costs are also developed these relate to profit rates tobin s q exit rates degree of sunkness of capacity costs as well as size and growth rates copyright 1995 by blackwell publishing ltd

learning and the sources of corporate growth this paper explores the link between learning and corporate growth by developing different models of learning and showing that they produce observably different models of corporate growth using data on the growth of a number of firms in the us automobile industry during the 20th century we compare these different models of growth in an effort to identify the major sources of learning which these firms seem to have relied on although there are interesting differences between growth processes before and after the second world war the basic conclusion that we are drawn to is that learning in this sector is largely unsystematic and opportunistic

consolidation by merger the uk beer market this paper examines the determinants of market structure in the uk brewing industry over 1949 1969 sutton sunk costs and market structure price competition advertising and the evolution of concentration 1991 points to technology and advertising races as two key drivers of market concentration this study uses an own built longitudinal data set of the population of firms and breweries and reveals the importance of institutional factors in explaining the dynamics of market structure the practice of tying outlets to brewers and legal restrictions on opening retail outlets together with a permissive policy towards mergers made acquisition of medium sized firms and brewery closure shortly after acquisition the main driving mechanism towards industry consolidation during this period the number of firms and plants fell sharply by 74 and 60 respectively and production rose by about 25 with no firm entry and just one new brewery opening as a result concentration increased and the market transformed from a highly fragmented one into a stable oligopoly

does gibrat s law hold evidence from canadian retail and manufacturing firms this paper investigates the validity of gibrat s law holding for firms in manufacturing and retail trade sectors the object is to expand our knowledge of gibrat s law to include non manufacturing firms a unique longitudinal firm level database which contains information on canadian incorporated establishments enables the inter industry comparison the findings of the analysis are that gibrat s law is violated in both manufacturing and retail sectors violations of gibrat s law for both sectors include i growth rates that depend on firm size ii growth variability that depends on firm size and iii a negative persistence of firm growth finally age effects or selection effects are not the causes of these violations

industrial dynamics and economic geography capasso m stam e and cefis e industrial dynamics and economic geography regional studies how do industries emerge and evolve over space in this special issue the fields of industrial dynamics and economic geography are brought together in order to achieve a richer and more fundamental understanding of the organization of industries over time and space than each of these fields could do separately firm heterogeneity at the micro level and industry composition of a region at the macro level provide important elements in the explanation of industry emergence and evolution over space history and space matter in the evolution of industries this special issue shows how and why