The Devil Dwells in the Tails: A Quantile Regression Approach to Firm Growth – Out now
Toke Reichstein, Michael S. Dahl, Bernd Ebersberger and Morten B. Jensen
This paper explores the firm growth rate distribution in a Gibrat’s Law context. The aim is to provide an empirical exploration of the determinants of firm growth. The work is novel in two respects. First, rather than limiting the analysis to focus on the conditional mean growth level, we investigate the complete shape of the distribution. Second, we show that the differences in the firm growth rate process between large and small firms are highly circumstantial. That industry dynamics have a substantial influence on the relationship between firm size and firm growth. The data used includes more than 9000 Danish firms from manufacturing, services and construction. We provide robust evidence indicating that firm growth studies should be less obsessed with explaining means and instead look to other parts of the firm growth rate distribution.
Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 219-231 (2010)
Whether social networks diffuse knowledge across firm boundaries has been the topic of much debate. To inform these theories, this article considers two questions. First, who has contacts across firm boundaries? And second, when do these relations diffuse knowledge? Our empirical evidence comes from a survey of 346 engineers in the wireless communication industry around Aalborg in Northern Denmark. Our analysis finds that social contact between these engineers is frequent and is used to diffuse knowledge that receivers find useful. More experienced engineers are more likely to receive valuable knowledge from their networks. These findings show that the long-term relationships, which are more likely based on trust and reputation, are also more likely to be a channel valuable knowledge.
The role of informal networks in the development of regional clusters has recently received a lot of attention in the literature. Informal contact between employees in different firms is claimed to be one of the main carriers of knowledge between firms in a cluster. This paper examines empirically the role of informal contacts in a specific cluster. In a questionnaire survey, we asked a sample of engineers in a regional cluster of wireless communication firms in Northern Denmark a series of questions on informal networks. We analyze whether the engineers actually acquire valuable knowledge through these networks. We find that the engineers do share even quite valuable knowledge with informal contacts. This shows that informal contacts represent an important channel of knowledge diffusion.
Denne artikel præsenterer den nyeste teoretiske forskning i sammenhængen mellem entreprenørers erfaringsmæssige baggrund og deres fremtidige succes og innovationsevne. En række studier tyder nemlig på, at disse faktorer er tæt forbundet i kraft af nedarvede organisatoriske rutiner, som entreprenøren har med fra sin tidligere arbejdsplads. Denne teoretiske påstand undersøges gennem et detaljeret studie af udviklingen af den trådløse kommunikationsindustri omkring Aalborg samt gennem referencer til et kvantitativt studie af 3.500 opstartsvirksomheder i den danske fremstillingssektor. Begge studier peger i retningen af, at knopskydende virksomheder med erfaringer fra gode virksomheder har større sandsynlighed for succes, samt at disse virksomheder også er mere innovative i deres første tid end andre ældre virksomheder.