Investigating the exponential age distribution of firms

Alex Coad ()

No 2010-12, Economics Discussion Papers from Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel)

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 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L11 L20 L25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec and nep-ent
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (42)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Investigating the exponential age distribution of firms (2009)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:ifwedp:201012

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