Author, as appears in the article.: Plastino, Angelo Hernando, Ricardo Hernando, Alberto Zambrano, Eduardo Fernández Bariviera, Aurelio
Department: Gestió d'Empreses
URV's Author/s: Fernández Bariviera, Aurelio Zambrano, Eduardo Hernando, Alberto Hernando, Ricardo Plastino, Angelo
Keywords: Statistical thermodynamics Zipf Law firms' growth
Abstract: The distribution of firms’ growth and firms’ sizes is a topic under intense
scrutiny. In this paper, we show that a thermodynamic model based on the
maximum entropy principle, with dynamical prior information, can be
constructed that adequately describes the dynamics and distribution of
firms’ growth. Our theoretical framework is tested against a comprehensive
database of Spanish firms, which covers, to a very large extent, Spain’s economic
activity, with a total of 1 155 142 firms evolving along a full decade.
We show that the empirical exponent of Pareto’s law, a rule often observed
in the rank distribution of large-size firms, is explained by the capacity of economic
system for creating/destroying firms, and that can be used to measure
the health of a capitalist-based economy. Indeed, our model predicts that
when the exponent is larger than 1, creation of firms is favoured; when it is
smaller than 1, destruction of firms is favoured instead; and when it equals
1 (matching Zipf’s law), the system is in a full macroeconomic equilibrium,
entailing ‘free’ creation and/or destruction of firms. For medium and smaller
firmsizes, the dynamical regime changes, the whole distribution can no longer
be fitted to a single simple analytical form and numerical prediction is
required. Our model constitutes the basis for a full predictive framework
regarding the economic evolution of an ensemble of firms. Such a structure
can be potentially used to develop simulations and test hypothetical scenarios,
such as economic crisis or the response to specific policy measures.
Thematic Areas: Economics and business Economía y empresa Economia i empresa
licence for use: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/
ISSN: 1742-5689
Author identifier: N/A N/A N/A N/A 0000-0003-1014-1010
Record's date: 2016-02-16
Journal volume: 12
Papper version: info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Link to the original source: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsif.2015.0789
Licence document URL: https://repositori.urv.cat/ca/proteccio-de-dades/
Article's DOI: 10.1098/rsif.2015.0789
Entity: Universitat Rovira i Virgili
Journal publication year: 2015
Publication Type: Article Artículo Article