Human capital, innovation and the distribution of firm growth rates

Micheline Goedhuys and Leo Sleuwaegen

No 2015-013, MERIT Working Papers from United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT)

Abstract: This paper focuses on the occurrence of high-growth firms in relation to human capital and innovation. High-growth firms are rather exceptional and temporary phenomena and occur in the upper tail of the conditional firm growth distribution. Using quantile regression we study how human capital and RD affect the probability that high-growth firms occur. The results show that both human capital and RD increase the likelihood that a firm is a high-growth firm. Human capital appears to be positive and growth enhancing over the entire conditional growth distribution, hence also in the lower quantiles, where it reduces the likelihood of low growth. By contrast, RD increases not only the likelihood of high-growth firms, but also the likelihood of low-growth firms and exits, underscoring the risky nature of innovation. A probit analysis for high-growth firms and low-growth firms provides corroborating evidence for this finding. From a policy perspective the results suggest the use of more integrated policies, not only focusing on stimulating RD but also on the quality of human capital to foster the development of high-growth firms.

Keywords: Firm Performance; Management of Technological Innovation and R&D (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L25 O32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-hrm, nep-ino, nep-sbm and nep-tid
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://unu-merit.nl/publications/wppdf/2015/wp2015-013.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:unm:unumer:2015013

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MERIT Working Papers from United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ad Notten ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).