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)

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Growth and Job Creation of Spin-offs

Pernille G. Jensen and I have written a small paper on the performance of spin-offs in Denmark in terms of job creation and employment growth. It is an explorative, simple paper presentating findings on the potential of spin-offs as a particularly significant type of entrepreneurial entrant relative to other types of entrants. The paper has been submitted to an edited volume and is based on research from a project financed by the Rockwool Foundation.

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Paper accepted for Social Forces

My paper with Olav Sorenson on the migration of blue collar workers has been accepted for publication in Social Forces, one of the World’s leading sociology journals. We introduce a new method for estimating the financial value of social factors and show how the location choice of blue collar workers depend strongly on social factors and less on financial incentives.

Link to abstract, DOI link to paper

The Migration of Technical Workers – Out now

Michael S. Dahl and Olav Sorenson

Using panel data on the Danish population, we estimated the revealed preferences of scientists and engineers for the places in which they choose to work. Our results indicate that these technical workers exhibit substantial sensitivity to differences in wages but that they have even stronger preferences for living close to family and friends. The magnitude of these preferences, moreover, suggests that the greater geographic mobility of scientists and engineers, relative to the population as a whole, stems from more pronounced variation across regions in the wages that they can expect. These results remain robust to estimation on a sample of individuals who must select new places of work for reasons unrelated to their preferences—those who had been employed at establishments that discontinued operations.

Michael S. Dahl and Olav Sorenson (2010) “The migration of technical workers”,Journal of Urban Economics, Vol. 67 (1), pp. 33-45 [DOI Link]

New book published (in Danish)

Jagten på fremtidens nye vækstvirksomheder

Jagten på fremtidens nye vækstvirksomheder

Nyetablerede virksomheder bidrager årligt netto med 60.000 nye job til dansk økonomi, mens ældre virksomheder i gennemsnit siger farvel til flere personer, end de ansætter. Det understreger vigtigheden af nye virksomheder på arbejdsmarkedet.

De mest succesfulde iværksættere har typisk stor brancheerfaring. Særligt interessante er de såkaldte spin-off-iværksættere, som kommer direkte fra en eksisterende virksomhed i samme branche. Disse iværksættere står bag omkring 30 % af de nye virksomheder, og de har større sandsynlighed for at overleve i længere tid og blive vækstiværksættere. Dvs. iværksættere, der skaber høj beskæftigelse og værdi til samfundet. Overlevelsen hos de nye virksomheder er central og en vigtig forudsætning for en langvarig positiv effekt på samfundsøkonomien.

Undersøgelsen er finansieret af Rockwool Fonden. Bogens resultater bygger bl.a. på en gennemgang af karakteristika ved mere end 26.000 iværksættere fra 1994-2006, suppleret med en spørgeskemaundersøgelse blandt 10.000 danskere.

Undersøgelsen peger på, at beskæftigelsen kan udbygges, hvis de nye virksomheders potentiale styrkes, så de vokser mere. Vi kan med andre ord øge gevinsten uden, at der nødvendigvis etableres flere virksomheder, hvis vi fokuserer på de virksomheder, som overlever bedre, og hvis ejere har en større sandsynlighed for at blive vækstiværksættere. Bogen går derfor videre med at præsentere de personlige karakteristika hos de iværksættere, som giver den største sandsynlighed for overlevelse og vækst.

Spørgeskemaundersøgelsen viser, at spin-off-iværksætterne udover deres brancheerfaring især adskiller sig fra de øvrige iværksættere på følgende dimensioner: De er yngre, og de har en højere indkomst på det tidspunkt, hvor de bliver iværksættere. De investerer mere tid i deres arbejdsliv, og de lægger væsentligt større vægt på selvstændighed. Derfor starter de oftere virksomheder, som er uafhængige af andre virksomheder. Spin-off-iværksætterne bruger ligeledes deres netværk mere aktivt og har forbindelse til flere iværksættere gennem deres netværk.

Michael S. Dahl, Pernille G. Jensen og Kristian Nielsen. ”Jagten på fremtidens nye vækstvirksomheder”, udkom den 19. november 2009 på DJØF Forlag

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The Embedded Entrepreneur – Out now

Michael S. Dahl and Olav Sorenson

Using comprehensive data on the Danish population, this paper examines the determinants of entrepreneurs’ choices of where to locate their new ventures. Our findings suggest that entrepreneurs place much more emphasis on being close to family and friends than on regional characteristics that might influence the performance of their ventures when deciding where to locate those businesses. Two factors could explain our findings: On the one hand, entrepreneurs may simply value proximity to family and friends. On the other hand, these relationships may help them to assemble the assets and to recruit the personnel that they need to succeed in their ventures. Our results suggest that the former plays the greater role in entrepreneurs’ location choices.

Update, May 28: Received the EMR Best Paper Award for 2009

Michael S. Dahl and Olav Sorenson (2009) “The embedded entrepreneur”, European Management Review, Vol. 6, pp. 172-181 [DOI Link] – Download here

Master Program in Innovation and Entrepreneurship

My research group has a master program, which deserves some attention on this site.

MSc in Innovation, Knowledge and Economic Dynamics (MIKE-E) – leading to a Master’s Degree in Economics. MIKE-E emphasises economic analysis and strategies in relation to knowledge, innovation and economic dynamics.

MSc in Innovation, Knowledge and Entrepreneurial Dynamics (MIKE-B) – leading to a Master’s Degree in Business Economics.MIKE-B has a special focus on knowledge management and innovation in relation to entrepreneurial dynamics.

The close collaboration between the two programmes gives a unique opportunity to combine macro- and micro perspectives, and gives students new possibilities to design and individual study profile. The programmes enroll both Danish and international students and the teaching language is English.

Visit the website or even better see this folder for more information.

Hello world! Site have been updated…

Welcome to the new version of my website. In technical terms, I have moved from Joomla.org to WordPress.org, which is a little more simple and more appropriate for smaller, personal webpages like this. And I like to try something new for the site.

Please note the EMAEE Conference in Jena

My friend Guido Buenstorf is organizing the 6th European Meeting for Applied Evolutionary Economics (EMAEE) in Jena, Germany. The conference targets specifically the younger researcher in this field and is traditionally very successful.

EMAEE is an international conference focusing on young researchers (PhD students and post-docs). EMAEE provides a unique opportunity to discuss the latest insights and methods in applied evolutionary economics and innovation studies with top international scholars.

Evolutionary economics is a leading paradigm for research into innovation, organizations, and industrial dynamics. Beyond these fields, evolutionary economics provides a general approach to the study of emergent novelty and dynamic change in the economy. Plenary speakers at EMAEE 2009 will explore commonalities with the neighboring fields and disciplines – in particular behavioral economics, organization and management science, and historiography.

The conference will welcome among others Steven Klepper, Olav Sorenson, Sid Winter and Francesco Lissoni as keynote speakers. Deadline for abstracts is October, 31st, 2008. Check out the website for further details.

Whom do new firms hire?

Michael S. Dahl and Steven Klepper

Using the matched employer-employee data set for Denmark and information on the founders of new firms, we analyze the hiring choices of all new firms that entered in 1995-2001. We develop a theoretical model in which the quality of a firm’s employees determines its average cost, a firm’s productivity is based on its pre-entry experience and persistent shocks, and over time firms learn about their productivity. The model predicts that more productive firms are larger and hire more talented employees, which gives rise to various predictions about how pre-entry experience, firm growth rates, and firm size influence the wages firms pay to their early hires. We find that beginning with the time of entry, larger firms consistently pay higher wages to their new hires. These are firms with greater survival prospects at the time of entry based on the pre-entry backgrounds of their founders and that grow at greater rates over time, both of which are predictive of the wages paid to new hires from the time of entry onward. Our findings suggest workers are allocated to firms according to their abilities, which can give rise to enduring firm capabilities.