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The variance of firm growth rates: the ''scaling'' puzzle

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  • Sutton, John

Abstract

Certain recently reported statistical regularities relating to the dispersion of firms' growth rates have begun to attract attention among IO economists. These relationships take the form of power law or scaling relationships and this has led to suggestions that the underlying mechanisms which drive these relationships may have some interesting analogies with the mechanisms which drive scaling relationships in other fields. In this paper, I report some new empirical evidence in this area and I put forward a new candidate explanation for the relationships we observe. This candidate explanation does not rely on any correlation mechanisms; rather, it is consistent with the view that the typical firm consists of a number of (approximately) independent businesses. The size distribution of the constituent businesses within firms is modelled by reference to an analogy with the partitions of an integer.

Suggested Citation

  • Sutton, John, 2001. "The variance of firm growth rates: the ''scaling'' puzzle," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 2318, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:2318
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    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/2318/
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. John Sutton, 1997. "Gibrat's Legacy," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 35(1), pages 40-59, March.
    2. Youngki Lee & Luis A. N. Amaral & David Canning & Martin Meyer & H. Eugene Stanley, 1998. "Universal features in the growth dynamics of complex organizations," Papers cond-mat/9804100, arXiv.org.
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    Cited by:

    1. Siddharth Jain & Partha Gangopadhyay, 2020. "Impacts of Endogenous Sunk-Cost Investment on the Islamic Banking Industry: A Historical Analysis," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 13(6), pages 1-23, May.
    2. F. Clementi & M. Gallegati, 2005. "Pareto's Law of Income Distribution: Evidence for Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States," Papers physics/0504217, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2006.
    3. Luca David Opromolla & Alfonso A. Irarrazabal, 2009. "The Cross Sectional Dynamics of Heterogenous Trade Models," Working Papers w200924, Banco de Portugal, Economics and Research Department.
    4. John Sutton, 2001. "Rich Trades, Scarce Capabilities: Industrial Development Revisited," STICERD - Economics of Industry Papers 28, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    firm growth; power law; scaling relationships;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L1 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance

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