Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. The Rise and Fall of Business Firms
  • Cited by 10
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
May 2020
Print publication year:
2020
Online ISBN:
9781316798539
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316798539
Subjects:
Economics, Econophysics and Financial Physics, Physics and Astronomy, Econometrics and Mathematical Methods
Information

Book description

At the intersection between statistical physics and rigorous econometric analysis, this powerful new framework sheds light on how innovation and competition shape the growth and decline of companies and industries. Analyzing various sources of data including a unique micro level database which collects historic data on the sales of more than 3,000 firms and 50,000 products in 20 countries, the authors introduce and test a model of innovation and proportional growth, which relies on minimal assumptions and accounts for the empirically observed regularities. Through a combination of extensive stochastic simulations and statistical tests, the authors investigate to what extent their simple assumptions are falsified by empirically observable facts. Physicists looking for application of their mathematical and modelling skills to relevant economic problems as well as economists interested in the explorative analysis of extensive data sets and in a physics-orientated way of thinking will find this book a key reference.

Reviews

'This is a superb and fascinating book. The distribution of firms' growth rates exhibits a large number of regularities, including some that are very hard to explain. The authors are pioneers in that enterprise, combining empirical and theoretical work. This team of economists and physicists provides a model for a future way to do economics.'

Xavier Gabaix - Pershing Square Professor of Economics and Finance, Harvard University

'The Rise and Fall of Business Firms offers a lucid reconstruction and extension of the exciting developments that fundamentally reshaped our understanding of how firms grow and evolve, brought to you by the scientists responsible for the key discoveries. A must for anyone interested in the deep laws that govern economic processes.'

Albert-László Barabási - Robert Gray Dodge Professor of Network Science, Northeastern University

'There is a long tradition of physicists being interested in and contributing to economics. That tradition continues here in The Rise and Fall of Business Firms. The book is based on generalized proportional growth models for the dynamics and stochastics of the growth and decline of business firms. For further studies, the book points out where more detailed specific inter-related complexities (such as among products, markets, and technologies) can be incorporated. The theoretical analysis paired with empirical data provides valuable insight for firms to understand their past trajectory and future choices.'

Michael F. Schlesinger - Office of Naval Research

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

Contents

Contents
References

Metrics

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Book summary page views

Total views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.