IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/15983.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Generalized Preferential Attachment Model for Business Firms Growth Rates: I. Empirical Evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Pammolli, Fabio
  • Fu, Dongfeng
  • Buldyrev, Sergey V.
  • Riccaboni, Massimo
  • Matia, Kaushik
  • Yamasaki, Kazuko
  • Stanley, H. Eugene

Abstract

We introduce a model of proportional growth to explain the distribution P(g) of business firm growth rates. The model predicts that P(g) is Laplace in the central part and depicts an asymptotic power-law behavior in the tails with an exponent ζ = 3. Because of data limitations, previous studies in this field have been focusing exclusively on the Laplace shape of the body of the distribution. We test the model at different levels of aggregation in the economy, from products, to firms, to countries, and we find that the its predictions are in good agreement with empirical evidence on both growth distributions and size-variance relationships.

Suggested Citation

  • Pammolli, Fabio & Fu, Dongfeng & Buldyrev, Sergey V. & Riccaboni, Massimo & Matia, Kaushik & Yamasaki, Kazuko & Stanley, H. Eugene, 2006. "A Generalized Preferential Attachment Model for Business Firms Growth Rates: I. Empirical Evidence," MPRA Paper 15983, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:15983
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/15983/1/MPRA_paper_15983.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. De Fabritiis, G. & Pammolli, F. & Riccaboni, M., 2003. "On size and growth of business firms," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 324(1), pages 38-44.
    2. Bottazzi, Giulio & Dosi, Giovanni & Lippi, Marco & Pammolli, Fabio & Riccaboni, Massimo, 2001. "Innovation and corporate growth in the evolution of the drug industry," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 19(7), pages 1161-1187, July.
    3. 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.
    4. L. A. N. Amaral & S. V. Buldyrev & S. Havlin & H. Leschhorn & P. Maass & M. A. Salinger & H. E. Stanley & M. H. R. Stanley, 1997. "Scaling behavior in economics: I. Empirical results for company growth," Papers cond-mat/9702082, arXiv.org.
    5. Xavier Gabaix, 1999. "Zipf's Law for Cities: An Explanation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(3), pages 739-767.
    6. Kaushik Matia & Dongfeng Fu & Sergey V. Buldyrev & Fabio Pammolli & Massimo Riccaboni & H. Eugene Stanley, 2005. "Statistical Properties of Business Firms Structure and Growth," Papers physics/0502081, arXiv.org.
    7. Canning, D. & Amaral, L. A. N. & Lee, Y. & Meyer, M. & Stanley, H. E., 1998. "Scaling the volatility of GDP growth rates," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 60(3), pages 335-341, September.
    8. S. V. Buldyrev & L. A. N. Amaral & S. Havlin & H. Leschhorn & P. Maass & M. A. Salinger & H. E. Stanley & M. H. R. Stanley, 1997. "Scaling behavior in economics: II. Modeling of company growth," Papers cond-mat/9702085, arXiv.org.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yuichi Ikeda & Hideaki Aoyama & Hiroshi Iyetomi & Yoshi Fujiwara & Wataru Souma, 2008. "Correlated performance of firms in a transaction network," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 3(1), pages 73-80, June.
    2. Kaldasch, Joachim, 2012. "Evolutionary model of the personal income distribution," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 391(22), pages 5628-5642.

    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. Fu, Dongfeng & Pammolli, Fabio & Buldyrev, Sergey V. & Riccaboni, Massimo & Matia, Kaushik & Yamasaki, Kazuko & Stanley, H. Eugene, 2005. "The Growth of Business Firms: Theoretical Framework and Empirical Evidence," MPRA Paper 15905, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Stanley, H. Eugene & Plerou, Vasiliki & Gabaix, Xavier, 2008. "A statistical physics view of financial fluctuations: Evidence for scaling and universality," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 387(15), pages 3967-3981.
    3. Stanley, H.E. & Gabaix, Xavier & Gopikrishnan, Parameswaran & Plerou, Vasiliki, 2007. "Economic fluctuations and statistical physics: Quantifying extremely rare and less rare events in finance," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 382(1), pages 286-301.
    4. Xie, Wen-Jie & Gu, Gao-Feng & Zhou, Wei-Xing, 2010. "On the growth of primary industry and population of China’s counties," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 389(18), pages 3876-3882.
    5. Xavier Gabaix, 2011. "The Granular Origins of Aggregate Fluctuations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 79(3), pages 733-772, May.
    6. Xavier Gabaix, 2004. "Power laws and the origins of aggregate fluctuations," Econometric Society 2004 North American Summer Meetings 484, Econometric Society.
    7. Wright, Ian, 2005. "The social architecture of capitalism," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 346(3), pages 589-620.
    8. Misako Takayasu & Hayafumi Watanabe & Hideki Takayasu, 2013. "Generalised central limit theorems for growth rate distribution of complex systems," Papers 1301.2728, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2014.
    9. Gualdi, Stanislao & Mandel, Antoine, 2016. "On the emergence of scale-free production networks," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 61-77.
    10. Buldyrev, Sergey V. & Salinger, Michael A. & Stanley, H. Eugene, 2016. "A statistical physics implementation of Coase׳s theory of the firm," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(4), pages 536-557.
    11. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:15:y:2003:i:6:p:1-7 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Stanley, H.Eugene, 2003. "Statistical physics and economic fluctuations: do outliers exist?," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 318(1), pages 279-292.
    13. Hernan Mondani & Petter Holme & Fredrik Liljeros, 2014. "Fat-Tailed Fluctuations in the Size of Organizations: The Role of Social Influence," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(7), pages 1-9, July.
    14. Buldyrev, Sergey V. & Pammolli, Fabio & Riccaboni, Massimo & Yamasaki, Kazuko & Fu, Dongfeng & Matia, Kaushik & Stanley, H. Eugene, 2006. "A Generalized Preferential Attachment Model for Business Firms Growth Rates: II. Mathematical Treatment," MPRA Paper 15980, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Marco Capasso & Elena Cefis & Alessandro Sapio, 2013. "Reconciling quantile autoregressions of firm size and variance–size scaling," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 41(3), pages 609-632, October.
    16. Gatti, Domenico Delli & Guilmi, Corrado Di & Gaffeo, Edoardo & Giulioni, Gianfranco & Gallegati, Mauro & Palestrini, Antonio, 2005. "A new approach to business fluctuations: heterogeneous interacting agents, scaling laws and financial fragility," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 56(4), pages 489-512, April.
    17. Wright, Ian, 2009. "Implicit Microfoundations for Macroeconomics," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 3, pages 1-27.
    18. Stanley, H.Eugene, 2000. "Exotic statistical physics: Applications to biology, medicine, and economics," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 285(1), pages 1-17.
    19. Chakrabarti, Anindya S., 2012. "Effects of the turnover rate on the size distribution of firms: An application of the kinetic exchange models," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 391(23), pages 6039-6050.
    20. Calabrese, Armando & Capece, Guendalina & Costa, Roberta & Di Pillo, Francesca & Giuffrida, Stefania, 2018. "A ‘power law’ based method to reduce size-related bias in indicators of knowledge performance: An application to university research assessment," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 1263-1281.
    21. Stanley, H.E. & Amaral, L.A.N. & Gabaix, X. & Gopikrishnan, P. & Plerou, V., 2001. "Similarities and differences between physics and economics," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 299(1), pages 1-15.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Gibrat Law; Firm Growth; Size Distribution;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D21 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Theory
    • L25 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Firm Performance
    • E01 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General - - - Measurement and Data on National Income and Product Accounts and Wealth; Environmental Accounts
    • L00 - Industrial Organization - - General - - - General
    • L60 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Manufacturing - - - General
    • L65 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Manufacturing - - - Chemicals; Rubber; Drugs; Biotechnology; Plastics
    • L16 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Industrial Organization and Macroeconomics; Macroeconomic Industrial Structure
    • E17 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications

    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:pra:mprapa:15983. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    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.