IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cbr/cbrwps/wp270.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Significant Feedbacks in Firm Growth and Market Structure

Author

Listed:
  • Paul A Kattuman
  • Alexandru Chirmiciu

Abstract

There are some markets where the growth of firms are held to be subject to diminishing returns, or negative feedbacks; and there are other markets where firm growth is believed to be subject to increasing returns, or positive feedbacks. A long run tendency towards monopoly might be expected in this latter market type, as opposed to a tendency towards relative equality of size shares in the former. It would be useful to draw inferences about the nature of the feedback process from observed market shares and concentration. We motivate and develop a test for feedbacks in firm growth under the null hypothesis that there are none. We use the equivalence between an urn model of the no-feedback process and the asymptotic distribution of sums of ordered intervals in the random division of the unit interval. In the empirical application for the United States, we find that most markets are subject to significant positive feedbacks.

Suggested Citation

  • Paul A Kattuman & Alexandru Chirmiciu, 2003. "Significant Feedbacks in Firm Growth and Market Structure," Working Papers wp270, Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge.
    • Handle: RePEc:cbr:cbrwps:wp270
    Note: PRO-1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/cbrwp270/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. D.B. Audretsch & L. Klomp & E. Santarelli & A.R. Thurik, 2004. "Gibrat's Law: Are the Services Different?," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 24(3), pages 301-324, May.
    2. McCloughan, Patrick, 1995. "Simulation of Concentration Development from Modified Gibrat Growth-Entry-Exit Processes," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(4), pages 405-433, December.
    3. Geroski, P. A., 1995. "What do we know about entry?," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 13(4), pages 421-440, December.
    4. Parker, S. C., 1991. "Significantly concentrated markets : Theory and evidence for the U.K," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 585-590, December.
    5. Sleuwaegen, Leo E & Dehandschutter, Wim V, 1986. "The Critical Choice between the Concentration Ratio and the H-Index in Assessing Industry Performance," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(2), pages 193-208, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rui Baptista & Vítor Escária & Paulo Madruga, 2008. "Entrepreneurship, regional development and job creation: the case of Portugal," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 30(1), pages 49-58, January.
    2. Mark L.J. Wright & Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, 2004. "Firm Size Dynamics in the Aggregate Economy," 2004 Meeting Papers 878, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    3. Francesca Lotti & Enrico Santarelli & Marco Vivarelli, 2009. "Defending Gibrat’s Law as a long-run regularity," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 32(1), pages 31-44, January.
    4. Audretsch, David B. & Santarelli, Enrico & Vivarelli, Marco, 1999. "Start-up size and industrial dynamics: some evidence from Italian manufacturing," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 17(7), pages 965-983, October.
    5. Rui Baptista & Roy Thurik, 2004. "The Relationship between Entrepreneurship and Unemployment: is Portugal an Outlier?," Papers on Entrepreneurship, Growth and Public Policy 2004-40, Max Planck Institute of Economics, Entrepreneurship, Growth and Public Policy Group.
    6. Esteban Rossi-Hansberg & Mark L. J. Wright, 2007. "Establishment Size Dynamics in the Aggregate Economy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(5), pages 1639-1666, December.
    7. Avenel, E. & Corolleur, F. & Gauthier, C. & Rieu, C., 2005. "Start-ups, firm growth and the consolidation of the French biotech industry," Working Papers 200503, Grenoble Applied Economics Laboratory (GAEL).
    8. Younsuk Park & Jaeun Shin & Taejong Kim, 2010. "Firm size, age, industrial networking, and growth: a case of the Korean manufacturing industry," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 35(2), pages 153-168, September.
    9. Lina Cortés & Juan M. Lozada & Javier Perote, 2019. "Firm size and concentration inequality: A flexible extension of Gibrat’s law," Documentos de Trabajo de Valor Público 17205, Universidad EAFIT.
    10. Barbara ERMINI, 2008. "Oltre Gibrat. Capitale umano dei fondatori, endogeneita' del finanziamento pubblico e crescita delle giovani imprese hi-tech italiane," Working Papers 322, Universita' Politecnica delle Marche (I), Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali.
    11. Pedro Gil & Fernanda Figueiredo, 2013. "Firm size distribution under horizontal and vertical innovation," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 23(1), pages 129-161, January.
    12. Daunfeldt, Sven-Olov & Elert, Niklas & Lang, Ã…sa, 2012. "Does Gibrat's law hold for retailing? Evidence from Sweden," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 19(5), pages 464-469.
    13. Julie Ann Elston & Alois Weidinger, 2023. "An empirical examination of firm growth in the MENA region through the lens of Gibrat’s law," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 60(1), pages 121-131, January.
    14. Canarella, Giorgio & Miller, Stephen M., 2018. "The determinants of growth in the U.S. information and communication technology (ICT) industry: A firm-level analysis," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 259-271.
    15. Sven-Olov Daunfeldt & Niklas Elert, 2013. "When is Gibrat’s law a law?," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 41(1), pages 133-147, June.
    16. Ramón Rufín & Cayetano Medina, 2008. "Market delimitation, firm survival and growth in service industries," The Service Industries Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(9), pages 1401-1417, September.
    17. Gohmann, Stephan F. & Fernandez, Jose M., 2014. "Proprietorship and unemployment in the United States," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 289-309.
    18. Ana Sofia Domingues Rodrigues & Christopher A. Laincz, 2004. "Understanding the Variations in Gibrat's Law with a Markov-Perfect Dynamic Industry Model," Computing in Economics and Finance 2004 173, Society for Computational Economics.
    19. Tang, Ali, 2014. "Does Gibrat’s Law Hold for Swedish Energy Firms?," HUI Working Papers 99, HUI Research.
    20. Erik Stam, 2010. "Growth beyond Gibrat: firm growth processes and strategies," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 35(2), pages 129-135, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Firm growth; urn models; feedback process; size distribution; concentration ratio;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C16 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Econometric and Statistical Methods; Specific Distributions
    • L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms
    • L60 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Manufacturing - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cbr:cbrwps:wp270. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Ruth Newman (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.