When is Gibrat’s law a law?

Sven-Olov Daunfeldt and Niklas Elert ()

Small Business Economics, 2013, vol. 41, issue 1, 133-147

Abstract: The purpose of this article is to investigate if the industry context matters for whether Gibrat’s law is rejected or not using a dataset that consists of all limited firms in five-digit NACE-industries in Sweden during 1998–2004. The results reject Gibrat’s law on an aggregate level, since small firms grow faster than large firms. However, Gibrat’s law is confirmed about as often as it is rejected when industry-specific regressions are estimated. It is also found that the industry context—e.g., minimum efficient scale, market concentration rate, and number of young firms in the industry—matters for whether Gibrat’s law is rejected or not. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC. 2013

Keywords: Firm growth; Firm size; Job creation; Small firms; D22; L11; L25; L26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (40)

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Working Paper: When is Gibrat's Law a Law? (2010)
Working Paper: When is Gibrat's Law a Law? (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:sbusec:v:41:y:2013:i:1:p:133-147

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DOI: 10.1007/s11187-011-9404-x

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