This paper offers many new insights into the processes of firm growth by applying a vector autoregression (VAR) model to longitudinal panel data on French manufacturing firms. We observe the co-evolution of key variables such as growth of employment, sales, gross operating surplus and labour...

Complicated neoclassical models predict that if investment is sensitive to current financial performance, this is a sign that something is "wrong" and is to be regarded as a problem for policy. Evolutionary theory, on the other hand, refers to the principle of "growth of the fitter" to explain...

The issue of technological unemployment receives perennial popular attention. Although there are previous empirical investigations that have focused on the relationship between innovation and employment, the originality of our approach lies in our choice of method. We focus on four 2-digit...

Innovation is commonly seen as the principal engine of economic development. In this paper, we investigate the microfoundations of economic growth by relating innovation to sales growth at the firm-level, for incumbent firms in four «complex technology» sectors. The average firm, which...

Serial correlation in annual growth rates carries a lot of information on growth processes - it allows us to directly observe firm performance as well as to test hypotheses. Using a 7-year balanced panel of 10 000 French manufacturing firms, we observe that small firms typically are subject to...

We survey the phenomenon of the growth of firms drawing on literature from economics, management and sociology. We begin with a review of empirical "stylised facts" before discussing theoretical contributions. Firm growth is characterized by a predominant stochastic element, making it difficult...

Targeted reductions in employers' social security contributions are conceived as a key policy instrument used to facilitate job creation when labour cost is so high that it may deter companies from hiring new employees. Among the different measures implemented in France, the set of instruments...

This paper examines scientific collaboration between French public research teams and distant partners. We first analyse the role and the development of trust and then, the relation between the degree of sophistication of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and the constraint of...

There is evidence to suggest that firms wish to work with universities to gain access to new technologies, to knowledge of future technologies and their possible impact and to thechnical problem-solving capability. There is much less evidence to support the proposition that firms work with...

Knowledge transfer problem between two generations of professionals (usually from the old one to the new one) to a new dimension. Knowledge transfer is no longer reducible to classical solutions as face to face training, technical education, tutoring. Knowledge to transfer is professional...