Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP1862
Authors: Paul A. Geroski
Abstract: This paper contains a brief survey of recent empirical work on the performance of large companies. It tries to pull together the literature in the form of six stylized facts, illustrating them with data drawn from a single sample. The paper concludes by highlighting the issues which are thrown up for future work. These are: accounting for persistent heterogeneities between firms, accounting for the apparently erratic performance of many firms and, finally, moving away from hypothesis testing driven empirical agendas.
Keywords: corporate performance; profitability; growth; innovation
JEL Codes: L11
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| accounting profitability (M41) | performance differences between firms (L25) |
| other measures of performance (L25) | performance differences between firms (L25) |
| corporate growth rates (D25) | predictability of growth (O40) |
| heterogeneities in performance (D29) | persistence of performance differences (D29) |
| firm size (L25) | performance metrics stability (C62) |
| previous innovative activity (O31) | performance differences (D29) |
| irregular innovation patterns (O31) | predictability of firm performance (L25) |