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• This study applies novel firm-level dynamics of job creation and destruction. • Similar effects of age and size on net growth are caused by their different effects on job creation and destruction. • The age effect exists for young and mature firms. • The study further examines particular firm groups and business cycles. • Policy and managerial issues differ between a firm's expansion and aging. This study examines the effects of firm age and size on job creation and destruction of existing firms, using large-scale panel data from Japan. It contributes to the literature by examining the effects on firm-level job creation and destruction, differing from previous studies which focused on net employment growth (i.e., the difference between job creation and destruction for each firm) or job creation/ destruction on aggregated level (calculated by aggregating net employment increases/decreases of firms or plants). Results show that for an individual firm, age has significantly negative effects on the firm's job creation and destruction; however, size has a significantly negative effect on the firm's job creation but a significantly positive effect on its job destruction. Particular firm groups and different business cycles are further examined. The findings suggest that policy and managerial issues differ between a firm's expansion and aging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work investigates the factors that precipitate a firm's sudden high decline, which is defined as a short-term heavy contraction in firm size, and examines firms' performance in the aftermath of a high-decline (HD) event. The empirical analysis reveals patterns of HD events over the business cycle and across markets, providing insights into the factors that enable firms' resilience in terms of better growth performance after an HD event. Firms that upgrade their production processes and invest in enhancing their human capital show better growth trajectories in the aftermath of an HD event. Plain English Summary: Periods of high decline are times of challenge and opportunity. This paper studies the drivers of a firm's sudden decline episodes and uncovers its strategic choices that boost its resilience to them. A key implication of this study is that process innovation and human capital effectively reduce a firm's risk of HD and improve its fate after such a high decline. Our findings may be particularly relevant for young SMEs, which may benefit from support policies that help them weather such periods of high decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I study the long-term effects of landing a first job at a large firm versus a small one using Spanish administrative data. Size could be a relevant employer attribute for inexperienced workers since large firms are associated with greater productivity, wages, and training. The key empirical challenge is selection into first jobs based on unobserved worker characteristics. I develop an instrumental variable approach that, keeping business cycle conditions fixed, leverages variation in the composition of labor demand that labor market entrants face. Initially matching with a larger firm persistently improves long-term outcomes, even through subsequent jobs. Mechanisms suggest better skill development at large firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Kenya were severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and restrictions put in place to contain it. This study assesses the impact of these restrictions on the midstream of the potato and fish value chains, with a focus on traders and processors, and investigates the short- and longer-term responses and 'pivoting' strategies deployed by these firms. Longitudinal data were collected from 937 respondents with three recall periods: (1) the pre-pandemic situation (2019); (2) the period of strictest restrictions, necessitating immediate adaptations by firms (2020); and (3) a period of anticipated recovery with longer-term business adaptation strategies (2021). Firms in both value chains reported a dramatic drop in turnover in 2020. Potato SMEs partially recovered in 2021, but fish SMEs reported further declines in turnover. In the face of restrictions, SMEs shifted toward more localized procurement and sales, shorter supply chains (often by-passing intermediaries and increasing use of contracts), use of smaller vehicles, and toward the adoption of information and communication technology (ICT) to search for and engage with business partners. Smaller firms and the biggest of businesses were more resilient and less subject to large fluctuations in business turnover, suggesting an inverted U-shape relationship between firm size and impact. Firms located close to production areas and selling primarily within their own county were also less affected. We provide recommendations for increasing business resilience to shocks based on these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We show that a simple, intuitive variable, Goliath versus David (GVD), reflects time variation in discount rates related to changes in aggregate business conditions. GVD is the annual change in the weight of the largest 250 firms in the aggregate stock market and is motivated by research that shows that small firms are more severely impacted than large firms by economic shocks due to differences in access to external finance. We find that GVD is the best single predictor of out-of-sample market returns among traditional predictors, predicting quarterly market returns with an out-of-sample R2 of 6.3% in the 1976-2011 evaluation period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper documents that capital utilization and short-term debt are procyclical. We show that a strong positive relationship exists both at the aggregate and firm levels, and it persists even when we control the regressions for firm size, profits, growth, and business cycle effects. In addition, our DSGE model shows that in the presence of capital utilization, positive real and financial shocks cause the firm to change its financing of the equity payout policy from earnings to debt, resulting in an increase in short-term debt. Therefore, ignoring the firm's optimal decision on capital utilization may lead to misleading conclusions on how leverage is undertaken. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a more nuanced analysis of employee promotion decisions; specifically, how they are affected by firm size, gender and stages within the business cycle. Drawing on data from Portugal, we find that during times of adverse macroeconomic conditions, promotion prospects in all firms decline. Within large firms, women are more likely to be promoted during economic downturns, reflecting the 'glass cliff' hypothesis. In small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), overall promotion rates are less affected by adverse economic conditions, however, women are less likely to attain promotions. Our results emphasize the importance of market volatility and firm heterogeneity in promotion and importantly, reveal differing forms of gender discrimination. In large firms women are, in effect, afforded greater responsibility for the effects of market volatility whilst SMEs invest more confidence in male employees to manage during crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyse the time evolution of the empirical cross-sectional distribution of firms' profit and growth rates. In particular, we analyse the conditional properties of the empirical distributions depending on the size of the firms and the business cycle phase. In order to do so, we employ the Laplace distribution as a benchmark, further considering the Subbotin and Asymmetric Exponential Power (AEP hereafter) distributions, to capture the potential asymmetry and leptokurtosis of the empirical distribution. Our results show that the profit rates of large firms are characterised by an asymmetric Laplace distribution with parameters largely independent of the business cycle phase. Small firms, instead, are characterised by the AEP distribution, which accounts for the conditional dependence of distribution on the phase of the business cycle. We observe that the largest firms are more robust to downturns compared to the small firms, given their invariant distributional characteristics during crisis periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The authors examine the stability of dividend payout and the consistency in its predictability using sample of firms from 18 different countries amid their prevailing heterogeneous formal institutions (such as the legal system, corporate governance), the distinct state of economic development (developing vs developed) and changing times (during the crisis vs the noncrisis periods). Design/methodology/approach: The authors use tobit regression models with distinct specifications for the authors' investigations. The authors alternately analyze the study's results using Fama–Macbeth (FM) (1973) and generalized least square (GLS) regressions. Findings: The authors show a sharply declining stability in dividend payout with time using DeAngelo and Roll's (2015) framework. In terms of predictive consistency, the authors report that only a few idiosyncratic factors predict dividends consistently, and these results hold qualitatively true across the robustness analysis. The firm's liquidity appears to be the most consistent predictor of dividends payout, whereas firm's size being on the other extreme. The results signify that the idiosyncratic factors that matter for firm's dividend policy are not country specific. Instead, it reveals commonality of predictors grounded on characteristics of countries such as legal environment, investor's protection, economic state (ES) and economic cycle. Originality/value: The authors contribute to the dividends literature by providing the evidence of dividend instability through time and disapproving the stylized fact of sticky dividends. Besides, the authors provide international evidence of inconsistent predictability of dividends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses new confidential Census data to revisit the relationship between firm size, cyclicality, and financial frictions. First, we find that large firms (the top 1 percent by size) are less cyclically sensitive than the rest. Second, high and rising concentration implies that the higher cyclicality of the bottom 99 percent of firms only has a modest impact on aggregate fluctuations. Third, differences in cyclicality are not simply explained by financing, and in fact appear largely unrelated to proxies for financial strength. We instead provide evidence for an alternative mechanism based on the industry scope of the very largest firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We provide evidence supporting the hypothesis that idiosyncratic firm‐level shocks are important drivers of the Australian business cycle (granular hypothesis). We first document that the distribution of firm size in Australia is substantially asymmetric and follows a power‐law distribution with a long right tail. We then show that labour productivity shocks to the largest non‐financial firms in Australia account for about 20–40 per cent of the variation in Australian GDP growth over the period 2000–18. Besides energy sector firms, firms in the construction, transportation and consumer services sectors appear to be relevant drivers of GDP growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) data on job openings and labor turnover. Topics discussed include new job openings, size of the business and business cycle; the JOLTS program which thereby covers economic organizations, media, government agencies, and universities; and business and worker behaviors over the business cycle.

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Do large firm dynamics drive the business cycle? We answer this question by developing a quantitative theory of aggregate fluctuations caused by firm-level disturbances alone. We show that a standard heterogeneous firm dynamics setup already contains in it a theory of the business cycle, without appealing to aggregate shocks. We offer an analytical characterization of the law of motion of the aggregate state in this class of models, the firm size distribution, and show that aggregate output and productivity dynamics display: (i) persistence, (ii) volatility, and (iii) time-varying second moments. We explore the key role of moments of the firm size distribution, and, in particular, the role of large firm dynamics, in shaping aggregate fluctuations, theoretically, quantitatively, and in the data. (JEL D21, D22, D24, E32, L11) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Differences in performance among established firms diversifying into young industries were investigated, with hypotheses concerning 11 'corporate level' strategic and organizational variables being examined. Performance was found to be associated with firm size and financial strength, time of entry, and the maturity of the firm's markets. The importance of several variables examined also appears to change as an industry evolves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The effects on employment growth in firms, grouped by size class, of the economic crisis that began in 2008 are analysed using multifactor partitioning (MFP). Italy's employment growth is decomposed into four explanatory factors: the stage in the business cycle; the effect of firm size; industry composition; and regional distribution; together with the interactions among these four effects. The interpretation of these effects is facilitated by the introduction within the MFP framework of a new decomposition of several key elements. The results show that the adopted approach and the suggested decompositions are useful to study the effect of size on employment change. This effect is found to be negative only for micro units (with less than 10 employees). For the other classes, it is positive. The observed negative changes in these classes are mainly due to the business cycle and an unfavourable industrial composition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of globalization on the operational efficiency of emerging market firms by concentrating on the financial outcomes of a firm's main operations through focusing on operating income and cash conversion cycle as well as on their possible causes in an emerging market, Turkey. The findings indicate that globalization significantly deteriorates the operating income and lengthens the cash conversion cycle of Turkish firms. Besides, globalization is found to increase sales of SMEs and decrease sales of large companies significantly and the impact on operating income of large companies is observed to be stronger. Globalization is also found to lead a softening in Turkish firm's terms of sales and enable Turkish SMEs to benefit from better terms of purchase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the approach proposed by Gabaix (2011), this paper aims to verify the existence of granularity in the Spanish business cycle fluctuations. A granular firm is characterized by the fact that its idiosyncratic shocks have a significant impact on GDP growth fluctuations. Despite the fact that granular firms constitute just a marginal fraction of the total number of firms, they account for a significant part of business cycle fluctuations. Our analysis shows that half of the GDP growth fluctuations of the Spanish economy can be linked to the idiosyncratic shocks of the largest 100 Spanish firms. Our work contributes to strengthening the empirical relevance of the granular hypothesis. The results show that the Spanish economy, as happens in the US economy, may be represented by a large number of small and medium enterprises whose individual evolution has no impact at the aggregate level, and a small number of large firms whose fluctuations contribute significantly to the variability of the Spanish business cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the dynamics of productivity in a large sample of Italian manufacturing firms, focusing on the determinants of firm-level persistence in time of high total factor productivity (TFP) growth rates relative to the corresponding sectoral distributions. In particular, we assess the impact of both the internal characteristics of companies, including size and management strategies, and external systemic conditions, including business cycles and regional innovation performance. In order to disentangle the effects of the mix of internal and systemic factors in shaping firm-level persistence, we implement both transition probability matrices and dynamic probit models. Results reveal the presence of significant persistence in TFP growth rates. Such persistence turns out to be path-dependent since it is shaped by a number of complementary and contingent factors that locally affect the dynamics of the process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports that U.S. lawmakers have presented several proposals to prevent companies from engaging in inversion transactions, including changing the requirements for the size and location of business activity. Topics discussed include the definition of inversion, the motivations of companies doing inversion transactions, including to lower their tax bill, and rules the U.S. government has issued in attempt to curb inversion transactions, such as the American Jobs Creation Act.