Firm growth and scaling of growth rate variance in multiplant firms

Alex Coad ()

Economics Bulletin, 2008, vol. 12, issue 9, pages 1-15

Abstract: While Gibrat's Law assumes that growth rate variance is independent of size, empirical work has usually found a negative relationship between growth rate variance and firm growth. Using data on French manufacturing firms, we observe a relatively low, but statistically significant, negative relationship between firm size and growth rate variance. Furthermore, we observe that growth rate variance does not decrease monotonically the more plants a firm possesses, which is at odds with a number of theoretical models.

Keywords: Firm growth; Gibrat's Law; Growth rate variance; Multiplant firms; Scaling relationship (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-03-12
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://economicsbulletin.vanderbilt.edu/2008/volume12/EB-07L20013A.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Firm Growth and Scaling of Growth Rate Variance in Multiplant Firms (2007)
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: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ebl:ecbull:v:12:y:2008:i:9:p:1-15

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economics Bulletin from Economics Bulletin
Address: Economics Bulletin, Department of Economics, 414 Calhoun Hall, Vanderbilt University, Nashville TN 37235, USA
Series data maintained by John Conley ().