Maria Callejon

New Firms' Survival and Market Turbulence: New Evidence from Spain*

The availability of longitudinal data for individual firms has allowed the improvementof the existing knowledge on market structure dynamics. We present additional evidence through the analysis of a cohort of Spanish manufacturing firms. Our results confirm some basic empirical findings obtained in studies for other countries. According to the behavior of the cohort we study, Gibrats Law does not hold for new entrants. Patterns of market turbulence vary considerably according to the type of industry. The behavior of new firms seems to fit the learning model. The estimation of a hazard function demonstrates that the main regularities affecting the likelihood of survival of young firms are quite similar in different types of countries.

Business Dynamics and Efficiency in Industries and Regions: The Case of Spain

High rates of firm births and deaths are a pervasive phenomenon across industries and territories. Most studies have related the great turbulence at the fringe of practically all manufacturing industries to positive effects on the long-run performance of industries. According to these views business turbulence, although it has a relatively small incidence on net entry, leads to allocative improvement and stimulates innovation. The existing set of empirical studies does not reach clear conclusions, however, and many questions are still open. Our contribution analyses the relationship between business dynamics in manufacturing and the growth of total factor productivity in industries and regions. After a review of current literature on entry and exit it is argued that most models are tailored to suit the processes observed in industries and regions that are near the technological frontier, and we propose an approach that could be more representative of middle range economies such as Spain. According to this approach new firms are seen more as users of innovations than producers of innovations. We adopt a model based on a vintage capital framework in which new entrants embody the edge technologies available and exiting businesses are supposed to represent the most marginal obsolete plants. Both industries and regions are represented by a Halls type production function which controls for imperfect competition and economies of scale. The results show that both entry and exit rates contribute positively to the growth of total factor productivity in industries and in regions.

The Black Box of Business Dynamics

This article highlights the contributions of business dynamics research to industrial policy design. Business creation support programs are widespread despite the fact that the optimal rate of business creation and destruction remains unknown. Economic analysis emphasizes heterogeneity as the most salient characteristic of industrial dynamics. A better knowledge of the different types of entrepreneurs, their behavior and their specific contribution to innovation and growth would allow to see into ‘black box’ of business dynamics and would facilitate the design of appropriate public policies. The empirical analysis performed shows that self-employment has a quite different economic nature than business with employees. Public programs should not promote indiscriminate entry but rather give priority to able entrants with survival capacities. Survival of entrants is positively related to their size at birth. Innovation and investment improve the survival of new manufacturing firms. Investment in R&D increases the risk of failure in new firms, although it improves the competitiveness of the incumbents.

Public subsidies to business R & D: do they stimulate private expenditures?

The purpose of this paper is to obtain new evidence about a fundamental question of empirical studies on technology policy. Is public R&D a complement to or a substitute for private R&D? We examine, at an industry level, the relationship between private R&D expenditures and public subsidies in Spain, using panel data and controlling the interindustry differences in technological opportunities. The results suggest that public subsidies have complemented private R&D. This is an interesting result because technology policy was reoriented in the 1990s with a reduction of direct government subsidies for R&D and an increase in tax incentives.