Does size of innovative firms affect their growth persistence?

This study tests the theory of firms' proportionate growth on an original balanced panel of Spanish innovative firms. It offers a novel comparative empirical analysis of the persistence of innovative firms' growth by examining serial correlations in their employment, sales and innovative sales growth rates over the years 2002-2009. The main objective is to verify whether innovative SMEs and large innovative firms experience differences in their growth patterns. To this end, a semi-parametric quantile regression approach is adopted. Our empirical results widely confirm that there is a significant impact of firm size on both growth per se and its persistence. In particular, the results suggest that notwithstanding the remarkable growth potential of innovative SMEs, the persistence of their growth paths is the challenge. This result should be kept in mind when using mere company size as a marker for targeting policy support, especially when it comes to targeting innovative companies.

CIRIACI Daria;  MONCADA PATERNO' CASTELLO Pietro;  VOIGT Peter; 

2016-12-13

Editions du DULBEA Asbl

JRC91618

0008-0195,   

http://difusion.ulb.ac.be/vufind/Record/ULB-DIPOT:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/226449/Holdings,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC91618,