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...

Empirical work on micro and small firms has focused on developed countries. The little work that exists on developing countries is all too often based on small samples taken from ad hoc questionnaires. The census data we analyze are fairly representative of the structure of small business in...

In the race to the South Pole, Roald Amundsen's expedition covered an equal distance each day, irrespective of weather conditions, while Scott's pace was erratic. Amundsen won the race and returned without loss of life, while Scott and his men died. We investigate how firms' sales growth deviate...

This paper explores the determinants of start-up size by focusing on a cohort of 6247 businesses that started trading in 2004, using a unique dataset on customer records at Barclays Bank. In our theoretical model, post-entry growth is treated as a random walk, and start-up size is positively...

Does our ability to predict the performance of new ventures improve in the years after start-up? We investigate the growth and survival of 6247 new ventures that are tracked using the customer records at Barclays Bank. We put forward Gambler's Ruin as a simple theory for understanding new...

This ‘Debate Essay’ responds to the extensive overview of research on new venture survival provided by Soto-Simeone et al. (2020). The material they reviewed exclusively emphasised the link between the talents, skills, awareness of the business owner and new venture outcomes. Our case is...

We study employment and new hires among high-growth firms (HGFs) in the Swedish knowledge-intensive sectors 1999-2002. Using matched employer-employee data, we find that HGFs are more likely to employ young people, poorly educated workers, immigrants, and individuals who experienced longer...