An international comparison of the contribution to job creation by high-growth firms

Arbeitspapier

The basic principle governing the development of the accounting framework is the choice of appropriate comparators. Firstly, when measuring contributions to job creation, we should focus on just job creating firms, otherwise we are summing over contributions from firms with positive, zero, and negative job creation numbers. Secondly, because we know growth depends in part on size, the "natural" comparison for HGFs is with job creation by similar-sized firms which simply did not grow as fast as HGFs. However, we also show how the measurement framework can be further extended to include, for example, a consistent measure of the contribution of small job creating firms. On the empirical side, we find that the HGF share of job creation by large job creating firms varies across countries by a factor of two, from around one third to two thirds. A relatively small proportion of this cross-country variation is accounted for by variations in the influence of HGFs on job creation. On average HGFs generated between three or four times as many jobs as large non-HGF job creating firms, but this ratio is relatively similar across countries. The bulk of the cross-country variation in HGF contribution to job creation is accounted for by the relative abundance (or rarity) of HGFs. Moreover, we also show that the measurement of abundance depends upon the choice of measurement framework: the "winner" of a cross-national HGF "beauty context" on one measure will not necessarily be the winner on another.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IFN Working Paper ; No. 1216

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis ; Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity ; Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms ; Firm Performance: Size, Diversification, and Scope ; Entrepreneurship ; New Firms; Startups
• Subject: High-growth firms ; Firm growth ; Job creation

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Anyadike-Danes, Michael ; Bjuggren, Carl Magnus ; Dumont, Michel ; Gottschalk, Sandra ; Hölzl, Werner ; Johansson, Dan ; Maliranta, Mika ; Myrann, Anja ; Nielsen, Kristian Hvidtfelt ; Zheng, Guanyu
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN)
• (where): Stockholm
• (when): 2018

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/183445
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:45 AM CET