Gibrat’s Law predicts that firm growth is a purely random effect and therefore should be independent of firm size. The purpose of this paper is to test Gibrat’s law within the retail industry, using a novel data-set comprising all Swedish limited liability companies active at some point...

Most firms do not grow, and a small number of high-growth firms seem to create most new jobs. These firms have therefore received increasing attention among policymakers. The question is whether high-growth tends to persist? We investigate this question using firm-level data from Sweden during...

Central banks have become more independent in many countries. A common rationale has been the existence of a credibility (or lack-of-trust) problem for monetary policy. This indicates a possible and until now unexplored link between social trust and central-bank independence. Our empirical...

Many countries have undertaken central-bank independence reforms, but the years of implementation differ. What explains such differences in timing? This is of interest more broadly, as it sheds light on factors that matter for the speed at which economic reforms come about. We study a rich set...

Changes in the Swedish tax code during the 1990s were structured in a way that offers an opportunity to test whether ex-dividend prices were determined by the taxation of domestic individual investors. The results presented in this paper indicate that ex-dividend prices were not influenced by...

Previous examinations of the literature suggests that high-growth firms (HGFs) exist in all or most industries, are not overrepresented in high-tech, and if anything appear to be slightly overrepresented in services. In an updated overview, we find that more recent studies, employing better...

Abstract: Previous examinations of the literature suggests that high-growth firms (HGFs) exist in all or most industries, are not overrepresented in high-tech, and if anything appear to be slightly overrepresented in services. In an updated overview, we find that more recent studies, employing...

Purpose – High-growth firms (HGFs) have attracted an increasing amount of attention from researchers and policymakers, and the Eurostat-Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) definition of HGFs has become increasingly popular. The paper aims to discuss this issue....