Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/30151 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2010
Series/Report no.: 
Economics Discussion Papers No. 2010-12
Publisher: 
Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW), Kiel
Abstract: 
While several plots of the aggregate age distribution suggest that firm age is exponentially distributed, we find some departures from the exponential benchmark. At the lower tail, we find that very young establishments are more numerous than expected, but they face high exit hazards. At the upper tail, the oldest firms are older than the exponential would have predicted. Furthermore, the age distribution of international airline companies displays multimodality. Although we focused on departures from the exponential, we found that the exponential was a useful reference point and endorse it as an appropriate benchmark for future work on industrial structure.
Subjects: 
Age distribution
exponential distribution
firm size distribution
survival
JEL: 
L20
L25
L11
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by-nc Logo
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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