On the mean/variance relationship of the firm size distribution: evidence and some theory

Edoardo Gaffeo, Corrado Di Guilmi, Mauro Gallegati and Alberto Russo

No 805, Department of Economics Working Papers from Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia

Abstract: In this paper we make use of firm-level data for a sample of European countries to prove the existence of a positive linear relationship between the mean and the variance of firms� size, an empirical regularity known in mathematical biology as the Taylor power law. A computerized experiment is used to show that the estimated slope of the linear relationship can be fruitfully employed to discriminate among alternative theories of firms� growth.

Keywords: Taylor power law; Firm size distribution; Stochastic growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.unitn.it/files/5_08_gaffeo.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.unitn.it/files/5_08_gaffeo.pdf [302 Found]--> https://www.unitn.it/files/5_08_gaffeo.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:trn:utwpde:0805

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Department of Economics Working Papers from Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Luciano Andreozzi ().