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This paper illustrates an artificial ecosystem where hierarchical organizations emerge out of collisions between individuals, problems, solutions and choice opportunities according to the rules of the Garbage Can Model of organizational choice (GCM). These organizations are subject to dynamics of imitation, growth and extinction depending on relative fitness. In particular, organizations must be able to provide advantages over isolated individuals in order to exist. In this artificial world, alternative GCM decision styles separate organizations that are founded around original competences and innovations from those that are based on variable degrees of creative imitation of existing practices. This distinction provides first of all a micro-foundation for the debate between the liability of newness and the liability of adolescence of newly-founded organizations and, secondly, an explanation for the heterogeneity of firm size distributions across industries and regional economies. Furthermore, it suggests an evolutionary mechanism for a large majority of imitating firms to co-exist along a minority of highly innovative ones. Finally, the GCM suggests that for flexible, flat organizations crowdsourcing-like mobilization of internal resources adds dynamics and complexity to evolutionary and resource-based views. This dynamics contributes to the rationales for the existence of organizations and, furthermore, it highlights a generally negected aspect of the creative destruction of firms and industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine innovation following the Great Depression using data on a century's worth of U.S. patents and a difference-in-differences design that exploits regional variation in the crisis severity. Harder-hit areas experienced large and persistent declines in independent patenting, mostly reflecting the disruption in access to finance during the crisis. This decline was larger for young and inexperienced inventors and lower-quality patents. In contrast, innovation by large firms increased, especially among young and inexperienced inventors. Overall, the Great Depression contributed to the decline in technological entrepreneurship and accelerated the shift of innovation into larger firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do companies finance their investments? We examine the financing of investments according to firms' listing status, their size, and the nature of the investments. We show that private firms rely more on bank credit than public firms and less on financial debt, equity, and cash flow. We also show that the contribution of financial debt and equity increases with firm size. Considering both dimensions, we always find an increasing contribution of other financial debt and equity with firm size in both populations. Therefore, even in a bank-based economy, equity plays an important role in the investment of larger private firms. (JEL D25, E22, G21, G30, G31, G32) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop a dynamic capital structure model to study how agency conflicts between managers and shareholders affect the joint determination of financing and investment decisions. We show that there are two agency conflicts with opposing effects on a manager's choice of investment: first, the consumption of private benefits channel leads managers not only to choose a lower optimal leverage, but also to underinvest, and second, compensation linked to firm size may lead managers to overinvest. We fit the model to the data and show that the average firm slightly overinvests, younger CEOs invest more than older ones, while CEOs with longer tenure overinvest more than CEOs with shorter tenure. (JEL G12, G31, G32) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study human capital synergies in asset management mergers that stem from the improved ability to assign fund managers to more specialized tasks in larger firms. More specialized task assignment allows rotated managers to focus on their investment expertise and leads to incremental $54 million of value added per deal per year on average. The effects are concentrated in mergers that lead to a large increase in firm size and in funds whose management appears less specialized prior to the merger. Our results provide direct evidence on the role of firms in the assignment of tasks to fund managers. (JEL G23, J24, G34) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Firms in science-driven industries have traditionally devoted significant resources to basic scientific research. The intensity and outcomes of such investments, however, have changed over time. In this paper, we explore the trends in pharmaceutical companies' scientific research over a two-decade period between 1990 and 2009. The results of our analyses reveal that the scientific output of large pharmaceutical companies as measured by the publications of company scientists has significantly increased over time. We also find that company scientists' collaboration with external scientists has increased over time and across the board regardless of company size. Finally, we observe a decline in research and development alliance activities of pharmaceutical companies with the effect being weaker for large firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the finance industry is transforming into a data industry, measuring the quantity of data investors have about various assets is important. Informed by a structural model, we develop such a cross-sectional measure. We show how our measure differs from price informativeness and use it to document a new fact: data about large high-growth firms is becoming increasingly abundant, relative to data about other firms. Our structural model offers an explanation for this data divergence: large high-growth firms' data became more valuable, as big firms got bigger and growth magnified the effect of these changes in size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies how the nature of managerial skills affects firms' governance decisions. As required skills shift from firm specific toward more general abilities, replacing an underperforming CEO with an outside hire becomes more profitable for shareholders. Therefore, firms adopt stronger governance arrangements to limit the entrenchment of incumbent CEOs and exploit the improved opportunities offered by the market for talent. The analysis rationalizes the observed trend toward stronger corporate governance and offers novel empirical predictions concerning the relationship between managerial entrenchment, firm size, and the nature of managerial skills. (JEL D83, D86, G34) Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix , which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study an infinitely repeated oligopoly game in which firms compete on quantity and one of them is capacity-constrained. We show that collusion sustainability is non-monotonic in the size of the capacity-constrained firm, which has little incentive to deviate from a cartel. We also present conditions for the emergence of a partial cartel, with the capacity-constrained firm being excluded by the large firms or self-excluded. In the latter case, we show under which circumstances the small firm induces a partial conspiracy that is Pareto-dominant. Implications for cartel identification and enforcement are finally discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What determines the distribution of establishments in terms of size and life-cycle growth? How are those determinants related to aggregate productivity? We provide novel answers by developing a framework that uses price and quantity information on establishments' outputs and inputs to jointly estimate the demand and production parameters, and subsequently, establishments' quality-adjusted productivity, deriving both micro-level and aggregate implications. We find that the dominant source of variation in establishment size is variation in quality/product appeal but that variation in technical efficiency plays an important supporting role. Multiple factors dampen dispersion in establishment size including dispersion in input (quality-adjusted) prices, markups, and residual wedges. Relatively moderate dampening factors induce large aggregate allocative efficiency losses relative to their absence. We show that joint estimation of the parameters of the demand and production function crucially affects inferences on the determinants of the size distribution of firms and their implications for aggregate productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An influential emerging literature documents strong correlations between carbon emissions and stock returns. We re-examine those data and conclude that these associations are driven by two factors. First, stock returns are correlated only with unscaled emissions estimated by the data vendor, but not with unscaled emissions actually disclosed by firms. Vendor-estimated emissions systematically differ from firm-disclosed emissions and are highly correlated with financial fundamentals, suggesting that prior findings primarily capture the association between such fundamentals and returns. Second, unscaled emissions, the variable typically used in academic literature, is correlated with stock returns but emissions intensity (emissions scaled by firm size), an equally important measure used in practice, is not. While unscaled emissions represent an important metric for society, we argue that, for individual firms, emissions intensity is an appropriate measurement choice to assess carbon performance. The associations between emissions and returns disappear after accounting for either of the issues above. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyze the drivers of firm innovation in 35 African and Latin American countries. We investigate how firm-level capabilities and national country characteristics affect firm innovation activities and innovation outputs. Using data from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys, we analyze the factors driving firm-level innovation distinguishing two stages in the innovation process: firm engagement with innovation inputs and the translation of innovation inputs into innovation outputs. The paper provides empirical support for the importance of country-level macro and institutional characteristics, in addition to firm-level capabilities, across a large number of countries in determining firm-level innovation. We demonstrate that capital investment and training are just as important innovation activities as research and development spending in developing economies. We highlight the heterogeneity in firm innovation across firm size, country- and firm-level characteristics, and economic sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies upward job mobility in different types of local economies. Relying on Swedish register data, we disentangle the impacts stemming from local labour market size, the presence of related industries and occupations and the size of own-industry and own-occupation concentrations. Results show that the local economic structure is important in shaping upward mobility outcomes. However, we observe different impacts from local industry-versus-occupation agglomerations and depending on whether people move from lower-paid or higher-paid jobs. The results have important implications for understanding the drivers of upward job mobility in times of increasing labour market polarization and regional divergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the pecuniary externalities that arise when active fund manager compensation contracts have common components. This commonality in the compensation structure and loadings on each component across funds reduces asset price informativeness, amplifies the distortions from active managers' benchmark-hedging demand, and lowers the price of risk in financial markets. This is because contract commonality distorts investors' capital allocation to active management, and active managers' information acquisition and trading decisions. From a normative perspective, contract commonality increases the rigidity of the active industry size and performance-based fee. As a result, they do not vary enough with financial market conditions compared with a Planner's economy. Quantitatively, an increase in asset payoff uncertainty increases the size and performance-based fee twice as much in the Planner economy compared with the decentralized economy. From a positive perspective, contract commonality contributes to the inconsistency of several widely adopted measures of active manager skill. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has highlighted the importance of firm size for the propensity of technology licensing. However, the currently available knowledge regarding how firm innovation size affects the timing of technology licensing is limited, especially in developing economies such as that of China. Therefore, in the context of the Chinese patent system, this article builds a model for the timing decision of technology licensing from the perspective of licensors. This model theoretically reveals the relationship between firm innovation size and the likelihood of technology licensing at different time points. This article argues that there is a positive relationship between firm innovation size and the likelihood of technology licensing before the patent disclosure date; moreover, there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between the firm innovation size and the likelihood of licensing between the patent disclosure date and the grant date; however, firm innovation size is negatively correlated with the likelihood of licensing after the patent grant date. Empirical results based on 8737 first-time licensing data on invention patents of Chinese firms in 2001–2015 support all predictions. This study contributes to both the scholarly understanding of timing decision making in firms' technology licensing and the design of technology transfer policies for different firms in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives Rising Research and Development (R&D) activity has led to dramatic growth in India's pharmaceutical market in the last decade. This increase in R&D was occurring at a time of significant changes in the sector, notably in the intellectual property rights (IPR) system and the sector's increased focus on biopharmaceuticals. The objective of this study is to examine the impact of these structural changes along with the traditional drivers of R&D activity to better understand the transformation in India's pharmaceutical sector during this period and shed light on its future trajectory. Method We extend the traditional model to estimate the determinants of R&D by incorporating the changes in India's pharmaceutical sector during this period. With pooled data for the top 16 pharmaceutical firms during the last decade, this model is estimated using feasible generalised least squares. Key findings Our results show that R&D is affected by firm size, global reach, and profitability. Experience, particularly successful patent experience, is important. However, at some point, R&D activity resulting from longevity succumbs to diminishing returns. Also, the IPR environment and firm investment in biopharmaceutical treatment are important drivers of R&D. Conclusion Promoting R&D activity is vital to keep India's pharmaceutical sector on its growth trajectory. Policies supporting the sector's shift from imitation to innovation and promotion of biopharmaceutical treatment will ensure its continued success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the effect of financial and non-financial barriers on innovativeness. Using microdata from Brazil, it provides a rare detailed empirical investigation of this type in developing countries. The analysis is based on a novel conceptual framework of the moderating role of barriers to innovation. Research and development expenditure and informal methods of intellectual property protection are the innovation determinants least affected by obstacles to innovation. This is in sharp contrast to company size, whose effect appeared quite sensitive to barriers of all kinds. Disembodied and embodied knowledge outsourcing interact differently with different constraints: while the former appeared helpful in working around different types of barriers in low-tech sectors, the latter was more useful in addressing financial constraints in high-tech sectors. Finally, cooperation with other firms was negatively affected by obstacles when firms seek more radical innovations, whereas cooperation with research and education organizations proved attractive for companies facing organizational constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the impact of too-big-to-fail (TBTF) guarantees on the market for retail deposits. Exploiting information about all personal deposit accounts in Denmark and salient changes to the deposit insurance limit, we provide evidence that systemically important banks successfully retain and attract uninsured deposits in a crisis at the expense of other banks even as they differentially lower their interest rates. The funding shock suffered by nonsystemic banks causes a decrease in their lending. The results point to the distortive effects of TBTF guarantees in the market for retail deposits. Received March 15, 2018; editorial decision January 15, 2019 by Philip Strahan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some argue too-big-to-fail (TBTF) status increases the value of the largest banks. In contrast, we find that the value of the largest banks is negatively related to asset size in normal times, but much less so during the crisis. Further, shareholders lose when large banks cross a TBTF threshold through acquisitions. The negative relation between bank value and bank size for the largest banks cannot be explained by differences in ROA, ROE, equity volatility, tail risk, distress risk, or equity discount rates, but it can be partly explained by the market's discounting of trading activities. Received December 20, 2017; editorial decision November 14, 2018 by Editor Itay Goldstein. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over 8,000,000 jobs were lost in the Great Recession, creating widespread economic hardship. This paper documents a novel and robust empirical regularity that highly concentrated local labour markets experienced larger employment declines during the Great Recession. Through setting up a model with heterogeneous firms facing idiosyncratic productivity shocks, I show that firm size distribution summarised by the Herfindahl-Hirschman index plays a crucial role in the reallocation of workers, and it magnifies negative idiosyncratic shocks and attenuates positive ones. I undertake a series of empirical tests to rule out alternative explanations, and show that large employment losses in concentrated labour markets are not driven by highly concentrated industry locations being hit harder during the Great Recession, having smaller labour markets or higher firm leverage ratios. The effect of concentration level is larger in sectors with higher labour supply elasticity, or a higher variance of productivity shocks, and rises during the Great Recession compared to other periods, consistent with my model's predictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many prominent thinkers such as Karl Marx and Joseph Schumpeter thought that monopoly capitalism would eventually replace competitive capitalism. Several subsequent economists like Antoine Cournot and Piero Sraffa also maintained that increasing returns are incompatible with competition. This paper examines Alfred Marshall's and Allyn Young's views on whether monopoly capitalism is inevitable and whether increasing returns are incompatible with competition. Both Marshall and Young took their data from real life and were of the view that the economy was dominated not by big but small and medium firms. Both built on Adam Smith's analysis of the division of labour and thought that the dominant tendency in the system was that of industrial specialisation and differentiation. Even if some firms producing standardised products such as steel or raw materials became big, most specialised firms remained small, and both small and big firms coexisted in a framework of effective competition. Advent of imperfect competition did not mean absence of competition but rather its imperfect working. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many studies report that the size effect in the cross-section of stock returns disappeared after the early 1980s. This paper shows that its disappearance can be attributed to negative shocks to the profitability of small firms and positive shocks to big firms. After adjusting for the price impact of profitability shocks, we find a robust size effect in the cross-section of expected returns after the early 1980s. Our results highlight the importance of in-sample cash-flow shocks in understanding cross-sectional return predictability [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emphasis on business size has become more overt in recent years. However, it is not clear how company size influences consumers' evaluations. Five experiments investigate the effect of size on consumers' expectations and evaluations of company behaviors. Consumers expect higher communion from small compared to large companies, and consequently, small relative to large companies garner lower evaluations when they exhibit low communion behaviors. These high communion expectations are driven by the relatively lower marketplace power of small companies. While study 1 provides real-world evidence for the effect of company size on evaluations of company behaviors, studies 2A and 2B demonstrate that perceptions of power underlie the effect of company size on expectations for communion. Studies 3A and 3B indicate that when a company engages in low communion behavior, small relative to large companies garner lower evaluations and this effect is driven by consumers' perceived violation of expectations. Incorporating additional studies, two meta-analyses conducted with four studies for consumer expectations and six studies for consumer evaluations provide confirmatory evidence in support of our hypotheses. This research demonstrates that how companies are perceived in terms of size and power creates meaning for consumers that drives their expectations and subsequent evaluations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we examine stock market reactions to corporate downsizing using a neo-institutional perspective. Over the course of the 1990s, a time period in which shareholder value orientation gained momentum, downsizing became an institutionalized management practice. We argue and propose that the growing legitimacy of this practice is displayed in investors' reactions to downsizing announcements. Using a sample of 391 downsizing announcements of the S&P 100 firms for the period 1990–2006, we show that the announcement year has a positive (diminishing) effect on the abnormal stock market return and that prior downsizings in the focal firm's institutional field have a positive linear impact on abnormal stock market return. In addition, we provide evidence that these relationships are positively moderated by proactive downsizing motives and firm size. Our results contribute to a deeper understanding of the performance effects of corporate downsizing and investors' role in legitimizing this prevalent business practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship of firm size and age to its growth and survival differs depending on whether the size is measured by sales or employment. Using a large dataset of Greek firms over the period 1999–2014, we find the following patterns. Controlling for age, there is a strong negative growth–size relationship when measuring size with sales, but a strong positive one when measuring size with employment. Controlling for size, there is a positive monotonic survival–age relationship when measuring size with sales, whereas survival is negatively related with age for young firms when we measure size with employment. Our results indicate that public policies aimed at supporting SMEs should be specialized to the employment scale and the sales scale of enterprises, separately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the inter-firm spillover effect of productivities among two different-sized firms in Korea-large enterprises and small and medium enterprises (SMEs)-considering industrial relationships. After estimating total factor productivity in Korea by industry and firm size, we set and estimate two models using the cointegrating relationship of the Panel Error Correction Model-Model 1 for inter-industrial spillover effect and Model 2 for spillover effect between large firms and SMEs. Our study provides three major findings. First, a productivity gap exists between large enterprises and SMEs in Korea. Second, this productivity gap between large firms and SMEs has been expanding. Third, the R&D efficiency in large enterprises is greater than that in SMEs. Finally, the spillover effects in both firm groups in Korea are asymmetric. That is, even if the productivity spillover effect is significant in enterprises of both sizes, a large enterprise is more likely than an SME to benefit from the spillover effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Financial regulators and investors have expressed concerns about high pay inequality within firms. Using a proprietary data set of public and private firms, this paper shows that firms with higher pay inequality--relative wage differentials between top- and bottom-level jobs--are larger and have higher valuations and stronger operating performance. Moreover, firms with higher pay inequality exhibit larger equity returns and greater earnings surprises, suggesting that pay inequality is not fully priced by the market. Our results support the notion that differences in pay inequality across firms are a reflection of differences in managerial talent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the socially optimal design of financial networks, that allows to tackle the trade-off between risk sharing and contagion. We identify conditions on the shock distribution under which full integration or maximal segmentation is optimal. We also show that, under different conditions, the optimal network displays different levels of strength of linkages to other firms or intermediate degrees of segmentation. In the latter case, the individual and social incentives to establish linkages are not necessarily aligned. When firms face heterogeneous distributions of risks, they should optimally form linkages only with firms facing risks of the same kind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We show that economic conditions when managers enter the labor market have long-run effects on their career paths and managerial styles. Managers who began their careers during recessions become CEOs more quickly, but at smaller firms. They also have more conservative styles, such as lower investment in capital expenditures and research and development, more cost cutting, and lower leverage and working capital needs. These recession effects appear to be largely driven by the characteristics of the CEO’s first job (recession CEOs tend to start in smaller or private firms), which suggests that the early work environment is important to the formation and selection of managers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article extends existing alliance portfolio studies by exploring differences of antecedents for forming simultaneous alliances and one-by-one alliances using data from 1,029 alliances in the global pharmaceutical industry. The research's findings suggest that firms are inclined to form simultaneous alliances when they have more prior alliance experience, conduct exploration alliances, or are in high level of technological diversification. Second, although simultaneous alliance formation may decrease a firm's performance, greater alliance experience and inter-industry alliances may mitigate such the negative effect of simultaneous alliance formation on firm performance. Low levels of technological diversification may increase firm performance as forming simultaneous alliances. Moreover, propensity to form simultaneous alliances is increased with the increased number of formed alliances as larger firm size, organizational experience, and alliance experience take place. This article contributes to the current strategic alliances and organizational learning literature by introducing the concept of simultaneous and one-by-one alliances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article breaks down the distributional analysis of firm growth rates to the domain of regions. Extreme growth events, i.e., turbulence at the level of firms, are conceptualized as an indicator of competitive regional environments which enable processes like structural adaptation or technological reorientation. This provides a micro-funded empirical framework to operationalize the evolutionary dimension of regional resilience. Therefore, the flexible Asymmetric Exponential Power density is fitted to firm data for each German region during the years of economic downturn (2008-2010). Results show that firm-level turbulence is more pronounced in regions with higher aggregate growth performance, with a highly qualified workforce and with more unrelated variety in the industrial portfolio. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the sources of capital misallocation across a group of developing and developed countries, using the empirical methodology developed in David and Venkateswaran (2019. "The Sources of Capital Misallocation." American Economic Review 109 (7): 2531–67). The main findings are: (i) technological frictions—namely, adjustment costs and uncertainty—account for only a modest share of the observed misallocation; (ii) heterogeneity in firm-level technologies potentially explains between one-quarter and one-half, but (iii) dispersion in markups is much smaller; (iv) after accounting for these factors, on average, at least 50 percent of misallocation within each country remains unexplained, suggesting a large role for additional—potentially distortionary—factors. These factors are largely attributable to a component that is correlated with firm size/productivity and one that is essentially permanent to the firm. They exhibit strong negative correlations with income per capita and direct measures of the quality of the business environment from the World Bank Doing Business Report. The paper reports a broad set of moments describing firm-level investment dynamics and detailed parameter estimates on a country-by-country basis with an eye towards future work in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether wage losses after job displacement are driven by lost firm wage premiums or worker productivity depreciations. We estimate losses in wages and firm wage premiums, the latter being measured as firm effects from a two-way fixed-effects wage decomposition. Using new German administrative data on displacements from small and large employers, we find that wage losses are to a large extent explained by losses in firm wage premiums and that premium losses are largely permanent. We show that losses strongly increase with pre-displacement employer size. This provides an explanation for large and persistent wage losses reported in previous displacement studies typically focusing on large employers, only. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We estimate a dynamic investment model in which firms finance with equity, cash, or debt. Misvaluation affects equity values, and firms optimally issue and repurchase overvalued and undervalued shares. The funds flowing to and from these activities come from investment, dividends, or net cash. The model fits a broad set of data moments in large heterogeneous samples and across industries. Our parameter estimates imply that misvaluation induces larger changes in financial policies than investment. The investment responses are strongest for small firms but nonetheless modest. Managers' rational responses to misvaluation increase shareholder value by up to 4%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to shed light on the presence and importance of a significant number of small firms amongst serial innovators. Contrary to the common expectation in the innovative persistence literature, we posit that small serial innovators also benefit from operating within patterns of creative accumulation. However, it is in the quality of the technology and in the very nature of the knowledge accumulation process that the differences between small and large serial innovators can be found. Using a sample of 811 UK-based, highly innovative companies that patented over 66,000 inventions from 1990 to 2006, we find evidence in support of our theory. While large serial innovators experience higher innovation rates due to the scale of their innovation efforts, small serial innovators benefit more from processes of search depth characterized by the internal recombination of their previous knowledge. We find that important differences exist also in the very nature of the technologies being developed by small and large serial innovators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on GMM-system estimates of a large panel data set of Italian small- and medium-sized firms (SMEs) observed in the years 2001-2008, the analysis confirms that the growth of smaller firms is more dependent on internal resources than that of larger firms. In this regard, we adopt the standard model used to test the law of proportionate effect, augmented by the cash flow variable, to examine both the growth profile of Italian SMEs and the growth-cash flow nexus. We also show that for the SMEs in the Southern "backward" regions of Italy, the dependence of firm growth on inside finance is more intense than for firms operating in the more developed regions of the country. We conclude remarking that the tightness of the financial arrangement allows a downgraded size distribution, as the right-skewed firm size distribution of the Southern SMEs seems to suggest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Only a few studies consider heterogeneity in the effects of investment grants (subsidies) across firm size. Therefore, we investigate the effects of particular public policy on firm-level performance with a focus on firm size heterogeneity as an important determinant. We aim to investigate whether the larger-sized firms benefit from the direct financial assistance to a lesser extent when compared with micro- and small-sized firms. Specifically, we study the microeconomic effects of the Czech Operational Programme Enterprise and Innovation (OPEI) that was implemented during the period of 2007–13. Compared to previous studies, we work with a large firm-level dataset, consisting of 13,924 firms, of which 3,572 are supported firms (57% of beneficiaries of the OPEI programme). We implement the propensity score matching in combination with a difference in differences approach. We measure the overall financial performance of firms by using tangible fixed assets and their depreciation, sales, return on assets, and total factor productivity. While there are improvements in all evaluated indicators for microenterprises 2 years after the end of the programme, there are only minor positive effects of subsidies for larger enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the effects of monetary policy (inflation) in a Schumpeterian growth model with an endogenous market structure and distinct cash (or cash-in-advance, CIA) constraints on consumption, production, and two types of R&D investment—quality-improving and variety-expanding R&D. We show that the relationship between inflation and growth is negative if quality-improving R&D (incumbent) is subject to the CIA constraint, but positive if variety-expanding R&D (entrant) is subject to the CIA constraint. Inflation has no effect on growth as consumption or production is subject to the CIA constraint. In addition, the firm size may either increase or decrease in response to inflation depending on which type of R&D is constrained by cash. With all CIA constraints properly imposed, a likely scenario in our numerical analysis shows that a rise in inflation leads the growth rate to exhibit a decrease in the short run but an increase in the long run. Moreover, our welfare analysis shows that Friedman's rule, in general, is not socially optimal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops a model that shows how firm size--that most important firm-level correlate of R&D--moderates the impact of demand- and supply-side government policies that support R&D. The most robust result is that government support to product R&D will elicit less of a response the greater is average firm size within the industry. This result suggests, for example, that government support to upstream research in the life sciences will stimulate less downstream industrial investment in the development of new drugs to the extent that the firms in the downstream industry are larger. The model also predicts that where entry is less encumbered, we can expect demand-side subsidies to elicit greater product R&D within an industry. Thus, to the degree that, for example, barriers to entering the solar panel manufacturing industry are lower, we should expect R&D on solar panel development to rise more in response to tax credits for their purchase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze how increased access to financing affects firm total factor productivity (TFP) by exploiting a natural experiment following interstate banking deregulations that increased access to bank financing. We find that firms' TFP increases after their states implement these deregulations. Using a regression discontinuity approach based on the Small Business Administration's funding eligibility criteria, we show that TFP increases following the deregulations are significantly greater for financially constrained firms. Our results suggest that greater access to financing allows financially constrained firms to invest in productive projects that may otherwise not be taken up. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An empirical q-factor model consisting of the market factor, a size factor, an investment factor, and a profitability factor largely summarizes the cross section of average stock returns. A comprehensive examination of nearly 80 anomalies reveals that about one-half of the anomalies are insignificant in the broad cross section. More importantly, with a few exceptions, the q-factor model's performance is at least comparable to, and in many cases better than that of the Fama-French (1993) 3-factor model and the Carhart (1997) 4-factor model in capturing the remaining significant anomalies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the historical origin and diffusion of management practices. Despite their centrality in modern world, the concepts of 'management' developed fairly recently. Only with the Industrial Revolution, due to the increased firm size, owners needed a management structure to coordinate activities across different plants. Management soon became the subject of numerous studies in economics, sociology, and psychology to maximize firm productivity. The first large-scale programme of management practices diffusion was developed in the US during the Second World War: offering such training to US firms involved in war production boosted their performance for at least 10 years. After the Second World War, the US exported its management principles to Europe, where they have large and persistent effects on small firm productivity, and to Japan, where they interacted with the local economic conditions and originated the 'kaizen Japanese management', which aims at 'continuous improvement' in firm performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyse how patent thickets affect entry into patenting. A model of entry into patenting that allows for variation in technological opportunity, technological complexity and the extent of patent thickets is developed and analysed. Using UK data we then show that patent thickets are associated with a reduction of first time patenting in a technology controlling for the level of technological complexity and opportunity. Technologies characterized by more technological complexity and opportunity attract more entry into patenting. Our evidence indicates that patent thickets raise entry costs, which leads to less entry into technologies regardless of a firm's size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyses persistence in growth rates for a data set of manufacturing firms of all sizes. Previous quantile autoregressions of firm growth rates show that extreme growth events are likely to be negatively correlated over time, thus questioning the existence of persistent outperformers. By supplementing the quantile regression analyses with transition probability matrices, our study shows that “bouncing” firms coexist with persistent outperformers. This result is shown to be robust for all size classes as well as for the exclusion of firms who experienced acquisitions or spin-offs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Based on a three-equation model for initial firm size, survival, and firm growth we estimate firm-specific transition probabilities between size classes of the firm size distribution. This allows to analyze counterfactual scenarios that assess the impact of changes in exogenous variables on the intra-distribution dynamics of the firm size distribution. We find that a counterfactual decrease in average firm age increases the exit hazard of young firms, and at the same time reduces the probability of observing high-growth firms. An increase in the industry-wide entry rate and an increase in market growth, by contrast, have virtually no impact on the intra-distribution dynamics of the firm size distribution. Finally, a larger birth size increases the probability for the youngest and smallest firms to become high-growth firms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article studies the impact of a switch from free to charged highway provision on firm numbers and private sector employment in a panel of Portuguese municipalities covering the period 2007–2013. It exploits the fact that tolls on certain highways in Portugal were unexpectedly introduced in reaction to the sovereign debt crisis to establish causality. Findings suggest that the price of highway tolls in terms of forgone employment and firm formation may be substantial. Comprehensive analyses of effect heterogeneity reveal that the effects differ across municipalities, sectors and firm size classes. The negative effects of highway tolls are strongest in the municipalities traversed by the newly tolled highways and seem to decrease with distance from these highways, whereas distance to Lisbon aggravates the negative effects of the tolls. We also find that larger firms and manufacturing firms are more strongly affected by the tolls than smaller firms and firms in the service sector and that the negative effect on firm numbers is strongest immediately after the introduction of the tolls, whereas the negative effect on employment increases with the duration of the treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study empirically examines whether managerial myopia leads to short-termism of innovation strategy using Korean firm and USPTO data covering 1980–2017. The main finding is that payout indicators, as the proxy variables for financialisation and managerial myopia, have a negative effect on innovation, quantitatively and qualitatively. Hence, managerial myopia and short-termism of innovation strategy are related. Further, estimation by the firm's size reveals that the hypothesis of managerial myopia leading to short-termism of innovation strategy is valid only for conglomerates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We provide a model and empirical tests showing how an active acquisition market affects firm incentives to innovate and conduct R&D. Our model shows that small firms optimally may decide to innovate more when they can sell out to larger firms. Large firms may find it disadvantageous to engage in an “R&D race” with small firms, as they can obtain access to innovation through acquisition. Our model and evidence also show that the R&D responsiveness of firms increases with demand, competition, and industry merger and acquisition activity. All of these effects are stronger for smaller firms than for larger firms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Organizational innovation, its persistence, its relationship with technological innovation, and their influence on firm performance remain under-researched. These issues are investigated using an integrated firm-level data set obtained from two recent waves of the Norwegian Community Innovation Survey (CIS 3 and 4) and firms’ financial accounts. A Heckman two-step estimation, to ensure against potential sample selection bias, was used to demonstrate that between 1999 and 2004 a number of Norwegian firms were persistent in organizational innovation, and this persistence raised the (positive) effects of organizational innovation on their performance. The results also reveal that many firms undertook, and benefited from, different types of organizational innovation, and such benefits were increased by the combinative effect of organizational and technological innovation. The study also found that older and larger firms are more inclined to attempt organizational change, while smaller firms are more able to benefit. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article considers the heterogeneous microfoundations of agglomeration economies. It studies the co-location of industries to look for evidence of labour pooling, input sharing and knowledge spillovers. The novel contribution of the article is that it estimates single-industry models using a common empirical framework that exploits the cross-sectional variation in how one industry co-locates with the other industries in the economy. This unified approach yields evidence on the relative importance of the Marshallian microfoundations at the single-industry level, allowing for like-for-like cross-industry comparisons on the determinants of agglomeration. Using UK data, we estimate such microfoundation models for 97 manufacturing sectors, including the classic agglomeration cases of automobiles, computers, cutlery and textiles. These four cases—as with all of the individual industry models we estimate—clearly show the importance of the Marshallian forces. However, they also highlight how the importance of these forces varies across industries—implying that extrapolation from cases should be viewed with caution. The article concludes with an investigation of the pattern of heterogeneity. The degree of an industry's clustering (localisation), entrepreneurship, incumbent firm size and worker education are shown to contribute to the pattern of heterogeneous microfoundations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]