Statistical properties of business firms structure and growth

K. Matia; Dongfeng Fu; S. V. Buldyrev; F. Pammolli; M. Riccaboni; H. E. Stanley

doi:10.1209/epl/i2004-10070-4

All issues

Volume 67 / No 3 (August 2004)

Europhys. Lett., 67 3 (2004) 498-503

Abstract

Issue		Europhys. Lett. Volume 67, Number 3, August 2004


Page(s)		498 - 503
Section		Interdisciplinary physics and related areas of science and technology
DOI		https://doi.org/10.1209/epl/i2004-10070-4
Published online		01 July 2004

Europhys. Lett., 67 (3), pp. 498-503 (2004)

Statistical properties of business firms structure and growth

K. Matia¹, Dongfeng Fu¹, S. V. Buldyrev¹, F. Pammolli², M. Riccaboni² and H. E. Stanley¹

¹ Center for Polymer Studies and Department of Physics, Boston University Boston, MA 02215 USA
² Facoltà di Economia, Università di Firenze and CERM Via Banchi di Sotto 55, 53100 Siena Italy

Received: 10 March 2004
Accepted: 17 May 2004

Abstract

We analyze a database comprising quarterly sales of 55624 pharmaceutical products commercialized by 3939 pharmaceutical firms in the period 1992–2001. We study the probability density function (PDF) of growth in firms and product sales and find that the width of the PDF of growth decays with the sales as a power law with exponent $\beta=0.20\pm 0.01$ . We also find that the average sales of products scales with the firm sales as a power law with exponent $\alpha=0.57\pm 0.02$ . And that the average number products of a firm scales with the firm sales as a power law with exponent $\gamma=0.42\pm 0.02$ . We compare these findings with the predictions of models proposed till date on growth of business firms.

PACS: 89.90.+n – Other topics in areas of applied and interdisciplinary physics / 05.45.Tp – Time series analysis / 05.40.Fb – Random walks and Levy flights

Current usage metrics show cumulative count of Article Views (full-text article views including HTML views, PDF and ePub downloads, according to the available data) and Abstracts Views on Vision4Press platform.

Data correspond to usage on the plateform after 2015. The current usage metrics is available 48-96 hours after online publication and is updated daily on week days.

Initial download of the metrics may take a while.