It is often claimed that small and young firms account for a disproportionately large share of net employment growth. We conduct a meta analysis of the empirical evidence regarding whether net employment growth rather is generated by a few rapidly growing firms – so-called Gazelles – that...

This essay argues that the economic contribution of certain firms – be they small, young or rapidly growing – has to be understood in a broader context of creative destruction. Growth of some firms requires contraction and exit of some other firms to free up resources that can be reallocated...

Advanced products such as aircraft distinguish themselves by a number of characteristics. Products are complicated and produced under very complicated circumstances, but also have a very long life. The purchase price, therefore, is a small part of total user cost of the product. Product value,...

Endogenous growth theory is based on the notion that technological knowledge stimulates growth, yet the micro foundations of this process are rarely investigated and remain obscure. Knowledge spillover theory posits that growth is contingent on the technology dependence of industries, forming...

Prior studies have defined high-growth firms (HGFs) in terms of sales or employment, and analyzed their contribution to employment growth. We define HGFs by employment and sales and add definitions of value added and productivity. We examine the contribution of HGFs to employment growth,...

Empirical studies demonstrate that most net job-growth originates from a small number of high-growth firms (HGFs). The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether firm ownership – family, or private non-family – matters for being a HGF, using data covering all firms in Sweden during...

The purpose of this paper is to study who high- growth firms (HGFs) hire using a matched employer-employee dataset for all knowledge intensive industries in Sweden, where high growth is measured over the period 1999-2002. The results indicate that HGFs to a larger extent employ young people,...

Business angels are a vital source of capital for innovative startup firms. However, even of those startups that have the potential to fulfill angel investors’ expected return on investment, most are rejected during the angel’s investment decision process. Information asymmetry, risk and...

We contrast the performance consequences of intra-family vs. external ownership transfers. Investigating a sample of all private family firms in Sweden that went through ownership transfers during ten years, we find family firms transferred to external owners outperforming those transferred...

This paper provides new evidence on the determinants of entrepreneurship across countries. The paper investigates the relationship between the institutional setting, in terms of economic freedom, and entrepreneurship, as measured by self-employment in a panel data setting covering 23 OECD...