Are High-Growth Firms Evenly Distributed among Industries?

Previous literature suggests that high-growth firms (HGFs) exist in all industries and that they are not overrepresented in high-tech. Recent research, employing better statistical methods, indicates a link between industry innovation and HGFs. However, most studies have been based on a limited number of industries, excluded small firms, applied mainly descriptive statistics, and made use of a high level of aggregation of data. This paper studies the distribution of HGFs across industries employing a data set that includes all limited firms, i.e. firms of all sizes and in all industries, in Sweden 1997-2005. We carry out descriptive analysis, econometric analysis and formal hypothesis testing. The analysis is performed at different levels of aggregation of data. In general, the level of aggregation affects the results. However, it is a robust result that HGFs are overrepresented in knowledge intensive service industries while underrepresented in agriculture and in mining.

[1]  Per Davidsson,et al.  High-Growth Firms and Their Contribution to Employment: The Case of Sweden 1987–96 , 2006 .

[2]  Peter Preisendörfer,et al.  Fast-Growing Businesses , 2000 .

[3]  David B. Audretsch,et al.  Innovation, growth and survival , 1995 .

[4]  Magnus Henrekson,et al.  Gazelles as job creators: a survey and interpretation of the evidence , 2010 .

[5]  David Halabisky,et al.  Growth in Firms in Canada, 1985–1999 , 2006 .

[6]  G. Wit,et al.  High-Growth SMEs: Evidence from the Netherlands , 2008 .

[7]  D. Birch.  The Job Generation Process , 1979 .

[8]  Erik Stam,et al.  The roles of R&D in new firm growth , 2009 .

[9]  Matthias Deschryvere,et al.  High growth firms and job creation in Finland , 2008 .

[10]  Bruce A. Kirchhoff,et al.  Entrepreneurship and Dynamic Capitalism: The Economics of Business Firm Formation and Growth , 1993 .

[11]  Werner Hölzl,et al.  Is the R&D behaviour of fast-growing SMEs different? Evidence from CIS III data for 16 countries , 2008 .

[12]  Hannele Wallenius,et al.  Economic impact of gazelle firms in Finland , 2000 .

[13]  Michael Anyadike-Danes,et al.  Measuring business growth:high-growth firms and their contribution to employment in the UK , 2009 .

[14]  Johan Wiklund,et al.  Entrepreneurship and the Growth of Firms , 2006 .

[15]  M. Lerner,et al.  Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Research , 2003 .

[16]  P. Schreyer.  High-Growth Firms and Employment , 2000 .

[17]  Alex Coad.  Empirical investigations into the characteristics and determinants of the growth of firms , 2007 .

[18]  Fredrik Bergström,et al.  Entry into Swedish Retail and Wholesale Trade Markets , 2006 .

[19]  Dan Johansson,et al.  The Economic Contribution of High-Growth Firms: Do Definitions Matter? , 2010 .

[20]  Michael Wyrwich,et al.  Socioeconomic heritage and rapid firm growth , 2009 .

[21]  Matthias Almus,et al.  What Characterizes a Fast Growing Firm? , 2002 .

[22]  D. Storey.  Understanding the small business sector , 1994 .

[23]  Paloma Lopez-Garcia,et al.  What Makes a High-Growth Firm? A Probit Analysis Using Spanish Firm-Level Data , 2009 .

[24]  P. Davidsson,et al.  Arriving at the high growth firm , 2003 .

[25]  Alec Levenson,et al.  Labor Markets, Employment Policy, and Job Creation , 1995 .