Like Milk or Wine: Does Firm Performance Improve with Age?
XREAP Working Paper No. 2010-10
40 Pages Posted: 22 Apr 2011
Date Written: September 1, 2010
Abstract
Our empirical literature review shows that little is known about how firm performance changes with age, presumably because of the paucity of data on firm age. For Spanish manufacturing firms, we analyse the firm performance related to firm age between 1998 and 2006. We find evidence that firms improve with age, because ageing firms are observed to have steadily increasing levels of productivity, higher profits, larger size, lower debt ratios, and higher equity ratios. Furthermore, older firms are better able to convert sales growth into subsequent growth of profits and productivity. On the other hand, we also found evidence that firm performance deteriorates with age. Older firms have lower expected growth rates of sales, profits and productivity, they have lower profitability levels (when other variables such as size are controlled for), and also that they appear to be less capable to convert employment growth into growth of sales, profits and productivity.
Keywords: firm age, firm growth, LAD, financial structure, vector autoregression
JEL Classification: L25, L20
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?
Recommended Papers
-
Unlocking Productive Entrepreneurship in Africa’s Least Developed Countries
-
Credit Constraints and Productive Entrepreneurship in Africa
By Mina Baliamoune-lutz, Zuzana Brixiova, ...
-
Credit Constraints and Productive Entrepreneurship in Africa
By Mina Baliamoune-lutz, Zuzana Brixiova, ...
-
Credit Constraints & Productive Entrepreneurship in Africa
By Zuzana Brixiova, Mina Baliamoune-lutz, ...