Investigating the exponential age distribution of firms

Arbeitspapier

While several plots of the aggregate age distribution suggest that firm age is exponentially distributed, we find some departures from the exponential benchmark. At the lower tail, we find that very young establishments are more numerous than expected, but they face high exit hazards. At the upper tail, the oldest firms are older than the exponential would have predicted. Furthermore, the age distribution of international airline companies displays multimodality. Although we focused on departures from the exponential, we found that the exponential was a useful reference point and endorse it as an appropriate benchmark for future work on industrial structure.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: Papers on Economics and Evolution ; No. 0923

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior: General ; Firm Performance: Size, Diversification, and Scope ; Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms
• Subject: Age distribution ; Exponential distribution ; Firm size distribution ; Survival

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Coad, Alex
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Max Planck Institute of Economics
• (where): Jena
• (when): 2009

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/32674
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET