Age and firm growth: evidence from three European countries

Giorgio Barba Navaretti (barba@unimi.it), Davide Castellani and Fabio Pieri

Small Business Economics, 2014, vol. 43, issue 4, 823-837

Abstract: This article provides new insights into the dependence of firm growth on age along the entire distribution of growth rates, and conditional on survival. Using data from the European firms in a global economy survey, and adopting a quantile regression approach, we uncover evidence for a sample of French, Italian and Spanish manufacturing firms with more than ten employees in the period from 2001 to 2008. We find that: (1) young firms grow faster than old firms, especially in the highest growth quantiles; (2) young firms face the same probability of declining as their older counterparts; (3) results are robust to the inclusion of other firms’ characteristics such as labor productivity, capital intensity and the financial structure; (4) high growth is associated with younger chief executive officers and other attributes that capture the attitude of the firm toward growth and change. The effect of age on firm growth is rather similar across countries. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

Keywords: Firm growth; Age; Quantile regression; L21; L25; L26; L60 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (114)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Age and firm growth. Evidence from three European countries (2013)
Working Paper: Age and firm growth. Evidence from three European countries (2012)
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DOI: 10.1007/s11187-014-9564-6

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