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 are...

High-growth firms (HGFs) are critical for net job creation and economic growth. We analyze HGFs using the theory of competence blocs, linking firm growth to property rights and the interaction of complementary expertise. Specifically, we discuss how the institutional framework affects the...

Research on entrepreneurship has received an increased amount of interest in recent years, with self-employment being used as the most common proxy for "entrepreneurship" in empirical studies. However, there are various ways of defining self-employment, making it a somewhat dubious proxy. This...

This paper raises several issues concerning productivity analysis. An attempt is made to demonstrate the usefulness of a micro-based approach to productivity analysis which challenges some basic assumptions of conventional analyses based on aggregate production functions. With the help of a...

In this paper it is argued that the size distribution of firms may largely be determined by institutional factors. This hypothesis is tested in an exploratory fashion by studying the evolution of the size distribution of firms over time in Sweden for a period spanning from the late 1960s to the...

This study investigates changes in the number and the size distribution of firms in Sweden in the period 1968-1993. The number and the size distribution of Swedish firms are compared to the number and the size distribution of firms in eleven European countries. A decrease in the number of...