Firm Size Distribution and Power Laws in Brazil: Empirical Evidence

Marcelo Resende and Vicente Cardoso

No 13085, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: This paper investigates power laws for the firm size distribution in Brazil for the largest 1000, 500 and 100 firms. A systematic nested testing strategy is implemented and stronger evidence for a Pareto type I distribution emerges only for the extreme upper tail of the distribution (top 100 firms). The Pareto exponents for the top 100 firms display a statistically significant downward trend and a structural break in 2010. Their mean falls from approximately 1.27 in 1999–2009 to 1.05 in 2010–2024, approaching the Zipf benchmark of 1 and indicating a thicker upper tail and greater revenue concentration among superstar firms.

Keywords: power law; firm size; Pareto distribution; Brazil (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C12 C49 L11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-sbm
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_13085

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