How did Ghanaian manufacturing firms change in the period between 2003 and 2013? This paper presents results from a survey of 1000 firms in Ghana, conducted in 2013, which were randomly selected from the 2003 Ghanaian National Industrial Census. This survey allows us to track survival and exit...

This paper analyses the effect of uncertainty on investment spending. We analyse twotypes of investment, i.e. aggregate investment and investment in energy saving technologies,using subjective evaluations of expectations and uncertainty of Dutch firms in 1997. Weestimate several models...

Combining data from the Moroccan census of manufacturing enterprises with information from a commune survey, we test whether firm expansion is affected by local financial development. Our findings are consistent with this hypothesis: local bank availability is robustly associated with faster...

The contribution of different-sized businesses to job creation continues to attract policymakers’ attention, however, it has recently been recognized that conclusions about size were confounded with the effect of age. We probe the role of size, controlling for age, by comparing the cohorts of...

: The positive relationship between firm size and export behaviour is often considered certain. However, the vast number of studies in this area shows discrepancies in the findings: the majority of them confirm a positive and statistically significant relationship, some studies found no...

A major empirical challenge in economics is to identify how regulations (such as firing costs) affect economic efficiency. Almost all countries have regulations that increase costs when firms cross a discrete size threshold. We show how these size-contingent regulations can be used to identify...

The liability of smallness assumption suggests that smaller firms face higher exit risks. However, does it apply during crises? We show that during downturns size reduces firms’ exit risk by less; the hazard rate increases more rapidly in size.

The present work contributes to the debate on the theory of the firm. We focus our attention on three aspects: the role of the entrepreneur, the importance of co-ordination mechanisms within and outside the firm, and the fact that the growth of the firm may be governed by stochastic processes....

This paper, by using annual surveys of manufacturing firms from 1998 to 2005 in China, first documents a positive correlation between industrial agglomeration and firm size, which is previously found in developed economies. Next, by using the instrumental variable estimations, we identify that...

The present work contributes to the debate on the theory of the firm. We focus our attention on three aspects: the role of the entrepreneur, the importance of co-ordination mechanisms within and outside the firm, and the fact that the growth of the firm may be governed by stochastic processes....