Exploring the asymmetric cost behaviour in the context of European non-listed firms

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study provides international empirical evidence for the asymmetric cost behaviour of operating expenses in the context of the European non-listed firms. We employed a data sample of 4,177,625 firm years observations from Amadeus Database for the period 2009–2017 to explore the asymmetric cost behaviour phenomenon at the EU-28 countries pool and country level. Substantial variation in the direction of the asymmetric cost behaviour, across countries and firm size clusters, has been observed. However, in a considerable number of cases operating expenses exhibit symmetric cost behaviour. We conjecture that the reasons behind the observed pattern of asymmetric cost behaviour in the organizational setting of non-listed firms are the relative low availability of entrepreneurial economic resources and the presence of entrepreneur which might affect the resource allocation decision-making process.