Investigating the exponential age distribution of firms

Alex Coad ()

Papers on Economics and Evolution from Philipps University Marburg, Department of Geography

Abstract: While several plots of the aggregate age distribution suggest that firm age is exponentially distributed, we find some departures from the exponential benchmark. At the lower tail, we find that very young establishments are more numerous than expected, but they face high exit hazards. At the upper tail, the oldest firms are older than the exponential would have predicted. Furthermore, the age distribution of international airline companies displays multimodality. Although we focused on departures from the exponential, we found that the exponential was a useful reference point and endorse it as an appropriate benchmark for future work on industrial structure.

Keywords: Age distribution; Exponential distribution; Firm size distribution; Survival Length 16 pages (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L11 L20 L25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec and nep-ent
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:esi:evopap:2009-23

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