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arXiv · 2302.02485

Facts of US Firm Scale and Growth 1970-2019: An Illustrated Guide

Robert Parham
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Abstract

This work analyzes data on all public US firms in the 50 year period 1970-2019, and presents 18 stylized facts of their scale, income, growth, return, investment, and dynamism. Special attention is given to (i) identifying distributional forms; and (ii) scale effects -- systematic difference between firms based on their scale of operations. Notable findings are that the Difference-of-Log-Normals (DLN) distribution has a central role in describing firm data, scale-dependent heteroskedasticity is rampant, and small firms are systematically different from large firms.

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Robert Parham. 2023-02-05. Facts of US Firm Scale and Growth 1970-2019: An Illustrated Guide. https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.02485

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