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Facts of US Firm Scale and Growth 1970-2019: An Illustrated Guide

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  • Robert Parham

Abstract

This work analyzes data on all public US firms in the 50 year period 1970-2019, and presents 18 stylized facts of their scale, income, growth, return, investment, and dynamism. Special attention is given to (i) identifying distributional forms; and (ii) scale effects -- systematic difference between firms based on their scale of operations. Notable findings are that the Difference-of-Log-Normals (DLN) distribution has a central role in describing firm data, scale-dependent heteroskedasticity is rampant, and small firms are systematically different from large firms.

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  • Robert Parham, 2023. "Facts of US Firm Scale and Growth 1970-2019: An Illustrated Guide," Papers 2302.02485, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2302.02485
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