Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/244539 
Year of Publication: 
2018
Series/Report no.: 
Working Paper No. 7/2018
Publisher: 
Örebro University School of Business, Örebro
Abstract: 
This paper addresses three simple questions: how should the contribution of HGFs to job creation be measured? how much does this contribution vary across countries? to what extent does the cross-country variation depend on variation in the proportion of HGFs in the business population? The first is a methodological question which we answer using a more highly articulated version of the standard job creation and destruction accounts. The other two are empirical questions which we answer using a purpose-built dataset assembled from national firm-level sources and covering nine countries, spanning the ten three year periods from 2000/03 to 2009/12. The basic principle governing the development of the accounting framework is the choice of appropriate comparators. Firstly, when measuring contributions to job creation, we should focus on just job creating firms, otherwise we are summing over contributions from firms with positive, zero, and negative job creation numbers. Secondly, because we know growth depends in part on size, the 'natural' comparison for HGFs is with job creation by similar-sized firms which simply did not grow as fast as HGFs. However, we also show how the measurement framework can be further extended to include, for example, a consistent measure of the contribution of small job creating firms. On the empirical side, we find that the HGF share of job creation by large job creating firms varies across countries by a factor of two, from around one third to two thirds. A relatively small proportion of this cross-country variation is accounted for by variations in the influence of HGFs on job creation. On average HGFs generated between three or four times as many jobs as large non-HGF job creating firms, but this ratio is relatively similar across countries. The bulk of the cross-country variation in HGF contribution to job creation is accounted for by the relative abundance (or rarity) of HGFs. Moreover, we also show that the measurement of abundance depends upon the choice of measurement framework: the 'winner' of a cross-national HGF 'beauty context' on one measure will not necessarily be the winner on another.
Subjects: 
high-growth firms
firm growth
job creation
JEL: 
D22
E24
L11
L25
L26
M13
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
362.35 kB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.