An analysis of Chinese firm size distribution and growth rate

Abstract

We analyzed a database comprising more than 100 thousands firms over the period 1998–2008. It was found that both asset and employee could be well fitted with power-law distribution, even firms were classified in different industries. Meanwhile, the growth rate distribution has a Laplace form, which is estimated by Subbotin family function, and it is also robust when firms are in categories. By analyzing annual logarithmic growth rates, we can see that the standard deviation has a power-law shape on both asset and employee, as researchers have found in western countries. In addition, there exists a power-law dependence of the standard deviation on the age of firms, which means that the growth of firms also rely on the years that they have opened.