Paloma Lopez-Garcia

Business Demography in Spain: Determinants of Firm Survival

The impact of entry upon market performance depends not only on the number of entries and their size, but also on how long do the firms last. Consequently, there are an increasing number of papers, most of them focused on the United States and restricted to the manufacturing sector, aimed at analysing the post entry performance of firms. Unfortunately, there is not much about this important topic in Spain due to the lack of appropriate longitudinal micro data on firms. The current paper aims to fill this gap by means of a new database covering all sectors of the business economy constructed at the Bank of Spain. We study the determinants of new firm survival using non parametric and parametric procedures especially designed to analyse duration phenomena. We find that larger start ups survive longer and that the probability of exit is larger in sectors with high entry rates and low concentration. One of the contributions of the paper is the inclusion of the initial firms financial structure among the determinants of survival. Our results suggest that holding debt, instead of equity, has positive and important effects on survival up to some point. Beyond this point, further debt increments have a negative impact on survival, and this effect is more important the higher is the corresponding debt ratio or indebtness of the firm.

What Makes a High-Growth Firm? A Probit Analysis Using Spanish Firm-Level Data

Many studies have established that a small number of firms, known as fast-growth firms or Gazelles, create most of the new jobs. In spite of the importance of this topic from a policy-point of view, most of those studies are descriptive and limited to a comparison of the characteristics of the high-growth group with respect to a control group of firms. This paper, on the other hand, performs a multivariate analysis of the determinants of the fast growth of Spanish firms controlling for the possible endogeneity of some variables. We use for that purpose a firm-level database with information for about 200,000 Spanish firms per year between 1996 and 2003. We find that being a start-up increases the probability of fast growth by more than 30 percentage points, conditioned on having survived over the period. Firms with initial higher relative wages and debt ratio, up to a certain point, also experience higher chances of fast growth. Hence, as it was established elsewhere, better access to finance and to human capital are key to increase the number and growth of Gazelles. We also find that high-growth firm sustain their expansion with relatively more debt and fixed-term contracts than the rest of the firms in the sample.

Spillovers and absorptive capacity in the decision to innovate of Spanish firms: the role of human capital

This paper investigates whether the existence of knowledge spillovers and the capacity of firms to assimilate them, which we relate with R&D intensity and some human resource management practices, are associated with the decision to innovate of Spanish firms. In order to do this, we employ data from the ‘Central de Balances’ database, which covers both manufacturing and services firms during the period 2003–2007, and use an estimator proposed by Wooldridge [2005. Simple solutions to the initial conditions problem in dynamic nonlinear panel data models with unobserved heterogeneity. Journal of Applied Econometrics 20, no. 1: 39–54] for dynamic random effects discrete choice models. The empirical exercise provides evidence on the positive link between spillovers and the innovative behaviour of companies, not just for the knowledge generated in the same industry, but also for that generated in the same region or by the public sector. Moreover, this link is stronger for those firms with a higher capacity to absorb those spillovers. This ability not only works through firms’ R&D capabilities, but also through factors such as the quality of the labour force, the share of temporary employment and the amount of resources spent in training. In addition to these factors, we find that innovation performance exhibits a high degree of inertia. Further, some other observed firm characteristics, such as size, sales growth, export behaviour, sector capital intensity or financial structure variables, are also found to be relevant determinants of the likelihood of innovation.

Firm productivity dynamics in Spain

We have constructed a new database aimed at the study of the relation between firm demography and labour productivity, with a large number of Spanish firms from both industry and service sectors. This database allows us to analyze in detail the degree of dispersion and persistence of productivity levels, as well as the contribution of firm demography to productivity growth. This analysis has been done at different levels of sector aggregation. We have also studied explicitly the differential role of small and large firms.

Employment Generation by Small Firms in Spain

Despite the relevance in terms of policy, we still know little in Spain about where and by whom jobs are created, and how that is affecting the size distribution of firms. The main innovation of this paper is to use a rich database that overcomes the problems encountered by other firm-level studies to shed some light on the employment generation of small firms in Spain. We find that small firms contribute to employment disproportionately across all sectors of the economy although the difference between their employment and job creation share is largest in the manufacturing sector. The job creators in that sector are both new and established firms whereas only new small firms outperform their larger counterparts in the service sector. The large annual job creation of the small firm size class is shifting the firm size distribution towards the very small production units, although not uniformly across industries of different technology intensity.

Business environment and labor market outcomes in Europe and Central Asia countries

New firm entry has been fundamental for job creation in the transition economies. Hence, the urge to reform the framework in which firms operate. This paper aims to improve our understanding of the business environment of the Europe and Central Asia (ECA) countries, as well as to assess which of the institutions that shape it are most important for labor market performance. To achieve that aim, the author groups the institutions into those affecting firm entry and those affecting business survival and growth, and proceeds to construct indicators to summarize them. Next, she analyzes the impact of the business environment institutions on the employment generated by the private sector of the countries, proxied by the service employment rate. The regression analysis uses an unbalanced panel of 28 ECA countries over 14 years-from 1988 to 2002. Recent literature on the labor market performance of the OECD countries argues that what matters for employment is the interaction between institutions and shocks. Accordingly, the explanatory variables used in the regression are the interactions between the transition shock suffered by the ECA countries and each of the business environment institutions previously defined. The author finds that access to finance is the most important institution across all ECA countries. The development of the financial sector can explain about 40 percent of private employment creation in the European transition economies according to the model. On the other hand, the poor access to finance in Bulgaria, Croatia, and above all, Romania, is the main factor behind their poor development of the private sector. Market regulation (credit and labor regulation), start-up costs, and the tax burden are all found to significantly affect employment as well.

Understanding the Spanish Business Innovation Gap: The Role of Spillovers and Firms’ Absorptive Capacity

This paper investigates whether the existence of knowledge spillovers, differences in the capacity of f rms to assimilate them and disparities in some human resource management practices are related with the decision to innovate of Spanish f rms. In order to do this, we employ data from the “Central de Balances” database, which covers both manufacturing and services f rms during the period 2003-2007, and use an estimator proposed by Wooldridge (2005) for dynamic random effects discrete choice models. The empirical exercise provides evidence on the positive link between spillovers and the innovative behaviour of companies, not just for the knowledge generated in the same industry, but also for that generated in the same region or by the public sector. Moreover, this link is stronger for those f rms with a higher capacity to absorb those spillovers. This ability not only works through f rms’ R&D capabilities, but also through such factors as the quality of the labour force, the share of temporary employment and the amount of resources spent in training. In addition to these factors, we f nd that innovation performance exhibits a high degree of inertia. Further, some other observed f rm characteristics, such as size, sales growth, export behaviour, sector capital intensity or f nancial structure variables, are also found to be relevant determinants of the likelihood of innovation.