The Best College Essay Topics

The Best College Essay TopicsIn the current times, where the best college essay topics have become so stiff, it is not that difficult to find the perfect college essay topics for your future. It is a lot easier than it was in previous years when you have to go through many essays and research for the perfect topic for your future college.There are many websites that let you search the different essay topics that you can write for a college essay. These websites allow you to select the topics that are most suitable for your essay and search the whole world for that particular topic. This way, you will be able to get a good piece of the topic for your essay and know about all of the topics that you can write for your essay.But how do you know which of the college essay topics that you will find is the best one? What are the topics that you will write for your future college essay, that will help you get the highest marks? Do you have a lot of time to spend and will have the best grades out of the other students? If this is the case, then you can search for the best college essay topics based on what you need.The best college essay topics are ones that you are going to love to write. These topics should have things that you are going to like to do or have fun doing. It should have something that you would like to talk about with the rest of your friends. And if you think that writing about football or other things that you have a passion for can give you the best grades out of your classmates, then you should go with football college essay topics.Another thing that you should remember is that college essay topics are things that you are going to write because you are going to write them for yourself. You are not going to write an essay for some stranger, for some professor who needs you to write for their class. And you should be very careful when selecting the topics for your essay.Keep in mind that college essay topics should always be based on what you have wri tten. If you have written a lot of different stuff about an actor that you have always admired, then you should not worry about writing about sports. But if you have written about a movie that you like so much, then you should definitely write about sports. Do not focus more on the essay topic, and let the rest of the essay write themselves.The best college essay topics should be ones that you enjoy doing. They should also be based on what you have researched on the internet or something that you have done in the past. Also, if you think that a topic you want to write about can bring up some controversy, then you should go with that as well. These are some of the best tips that you can use to help you with the best college essay topics for your future.

Help With Financial Assistance Essay - Writing A Scholarship Essay Or Scholarship Tutorial

Help With Financial Assistance Essay - Writing A Scholarship Essay Or Scholarship TutorialWhether you are struggling with loans, debts or credit card debt, or need financial assistance with your education, a good financial assistance scholarship essay sample is essential. It can help you see that what you are doing and thinking are on the right track to finish your degree and find the financial aid you need. Not only will you need a scholarship essay sample, but also a scholarship essay tutorial.Now, what's a financial assistance essay tutorial? Basically, it is a written guide to any research that will lead to finding free money for college, from any sources. That includes scholarships, grants, loans, or even an educator's trust fund. Many of the free resources are available on the internet and the online scholarships directory.So, let's say you have a scholarship essay sample ready, but what else do you need to find a free scholarship? A free resource will provide some tips, but yo u can also go directly to the source of that free information. Some sources that offer such information are your state board of education or universities. Other sources can be directly from the school itself.These free scholarships may be found on your campus financial aid office, the financial aid office or another educational department. No matter which department you seek, they will offer you the right type of assistance for you to use. These programs are completely free of charge.These programs are totally online and are totally free to the user. If you have a computer and internet access, you can go to the site of your local college or university and get to the information you need. You can check the universities' financial aid office websites to find out if any free financial aid is available for you. Your location may not affect the availability of these programs, but you may have to prove your economic status in order to qualify. educational grant Other, you can do the resea rch to find out how to apply for an educational grant. They usually depend on the size of your financial aid package. There are grants for non-residents and scholarship grant programs for local residents. However, if you are an out-of-state resident, then you may not qualify for a scholarship grant.One more resource that you should find is a free financial assistance essay sample or a scholarship essay tutorial. Either will enable you to find the right type of aid for you and help you know where to look.

The Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara is a must rea Essays

The Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara is a must read novel. The story is amazing because as you read this novel it makes you feel as if you are involved in the story. It makes one have an incredible feel- ing in its "you are there" quality, it made me feel as if I was on the battlefield, feeling what those men felt, seeing what they saw. This book is one that is near perfection as one reads about the execution of history fictionalized. This historical novel tells the story through the eyes, thoughts, and conversations of the participants about the Battle of Gettysburg. One of the largest battles in the history of North America, was the Battle of Gettysburg, therefore the author uses this story to relate the causes of the Civil War and the things that motivated these men and led them as old friends to face each other on the battlefield. The layout of this book is very interesting being that at the beginning of the book it talks about Longstreet's spy, Harrison. I'll go into more detail about Longstreet as one reads on a little further in this essay, but first of all, about the layout. It begins with the famous section about Longstreet's spy Harrison each day gathers information about the movements of the Federals. He is told each day primarily from the perspectives of commanders of the two armies which include, Robert E. Lee, and James Longstreet for the Confederacy, and John Buford and Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain for the Union. As they go into battle, most chapters describe the emotion-laden decisions of these officers, there are also maps determining the position of the troops as they went into battle. As they went into battle a sense of authenticity was added as decisions were made to advance and retreat with the armies. I have chosen to write about the south and the characters there in the south. One will see that as I use specific examples from the novel I shall define the southern perspective. I will also point out specific examples of the generals' and soldiers' personality traits, motivations, characteristics and concept of war. As one reads on one will see that I will go back into our text book, the American History and find information about Cortez and the different concept of war held by the Spanish and the American invaders due to their being good clear understandable discussions of the different concept of war. The following characters were a part of the southern war: First we have Mr. Robert E. Lee, Commanding General, of the Northern Virginia army Mr. Lee is a gentleman, and an honest man. He does not believe in slavery therefore he does not own slaves. General Lee is fifty seven years of age, he is five feet ten inches tall, and when he rides a horse he seems much taller because he has short legs. He is dressed in a grey felt hat, and a gray coat with a white-beard and a red face and has no "vices." (xvi) He is a major with dignity but is sometimes mistaken for one that is elderly. He is a God fearing man and do not chase women, he does not smoke nor does he drink, or gamble. He loves the mystic dirt of home above all and he loves Virginia, and of the two armies he is the most loved. The only thing I didn't like about him as due to me being African American is the fact that he didn't believe that the Negro could be was equal to the white man. Although I do understand the present stage of his development, but I still don't think that it was cool. But he was a good man because he didn't believe in slavery and he believes in God. Lieutenant General James Longstreet is forty-two years of age and second in command. He is a large man with blue eyes and a full beard, he is crude, ominous and slow-talking. He is a cold-eyed man who have sensed the birth of the new war of machines, he is one of the first of the new soldiers. Longstreet is not from Virginia and he is one of the few high officers in

How Does Poverty Effect A Child Young People Essay Example

How Does Poverty Effect A Child Young People Essay Example How Does Poverty Effect A Child Young People Essay How Does Poverty Effect A Child Young People Essay State parties recognise the right of every kid to a criterion of life adequate for the child`s physical, mental, religious, moral and societal development. ( UN Convention, Article 27 ) ( Daniel, P, 1998, p50 ) There are two definitions of poorness ; absolute and comparative. Absolute poorness refers to a set of criterions which is the same in all states and which does non alter over clip, whereas comparative poorness refers to a criterion which is defined in footings in which the person lives. In Britain we refer to relative poorness when discoursing poorness, harmonizing to End kid poorness. Org ( 2009 ) 4 million kids, one in three, are presently populating in poorness in the UK, hypertext transfer protocol: //www.endpoverty.org/ Any family with an income of less than 60 % of the British Median is classified as in poorness. The official cut off line is ?199 per hebdomad for individual parents and ?283.20 for a two parent household after lodging has been paid ( Gentleman, Amelia, 2009 ) It is frequently argued that if kids are housed, fed and have entree to liberate health care that they have nil to kick about, Hilary Fisher, manager of the run to End Child Poverty would differ saying half Dickensian, half wartime, with images of kids in ill-fitting apparels, is really far from world. Peoples have particularly outdated constructs of British poorness ( Gentleman, Amelia, 2009 ) hypertext transfer protocol: //www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/mar/18/child-poverty-labour-eradicate-promise Supplying a hebdomad s worth of repasts for three people for ?6.66 a caput is easy one time you work out how, .The gas and electricity payments for the hebdomad have already been made, so she knows the kids will be warm. A female parent s words quoted from an article from The Guardian. She besides rejects the suggestion that her household might be described as hapless. Oh no, she says steadfastly. We get by. hypertext transfer protocol: //www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/mar/18/child-poverty-labour-eradicate-promise Poverty normally means kids miss out on school trips, do non hold equal winter vesture and are nt able to bask leisure activities with their equals. As a consequence, their instruction suffers doing it hard to acquire the makings they need to travel on to sustainable, well-paid occupations. This limits their possible to gain the money needed to back up their ain households in ulterior life, and so a rhythm of poorness is created. Harmonizing to Rowntree the two most important causes of child poorness are long-run unemployment and the turning figure of low paid occupations. ( Daniel, P, 1998, p59 ) Children who grow up in poorness face a greater hazard of holding hapless wellness, being exposed to offense and neglecting to make their full potency. hypertext transfer protocol: //www.dcsf.gov.uk/everychildmatters/strategy/parents/childpoverty/childpoverty/ Childhood is the most vulnerable clip of life and wellness inequalities can hold permanent effects throughout life. Good wellness in the early old ages lays the foundations for positive development. hypertext transfer protocol: //www.hmg.gov.uk/newopportunities/early_years/priority.aspx Katy Morton says kids populating in poorness are more likely to be corpulent and have hapless dental wellness. ( Nursery World ) . Fleshiness can take to an increased hazard of diabetes, bosom disease, high blood force per unit area, degenerative arthritis and some malignant neoplastic diseases. hypertext transfer protocol: //www.food.gov.uk/science/dietarysurveys/lidnsbranch/ Attachment theory is the joint work of John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth ( Ainsworth A ; Bowlby, 1991 ) . He thereby revolutionized our believing about a kid s tie to the female parent and its break through separation, want, and mourning. Mary Ainsworth contributed the construct of the attachment figure as a unafraid base from which an baby can research the universe. hypertext transfer protocol: //www.psychology.sunysb.edu/attachment/online/inge_origins.pdf. Poverty reduces the parental bond and fond regard between parent and kid, due to the parent being pre-occupied with fiscal jobs, lodging concerns and wellness jobs, harmonizing to surveies of parents in hapless households ( Huston, 199 ; McLoyd, 1990 ; Sampson A ; Laub, 1994 ) ( Rudolph Schaffer, H, p346 ) This could be argued that kids whose parents are out of work and are at place with the kids may hold a better fond regard with their kids due to clip spent at home` the first few months are critical in order for babes to organize healthy attachments.` hypertext transfer protocol: //www.hmg.gov.uk/newopportunities/early_years/priority.aspx These surveies besides suggested that kid that come from poorer places frequently live in a helter-skelter and disorganised mode due to parents being excessively busy with their ain jobs and that kids would more likely to be attracted to playing in the street and are more likely to come to harm within the place and exterior of the place. That parents are more likely to utilize `erratic` and ` disciplinary techniques` to utilize physical penalty on their kids. ( Rudolph Schaffer, H, p346 ) Many kids who face poorness flight harm and develop into well-functioning grownups. ( Rudolph, Schaffer, H, p347 ) Poverty does non ever lead to inadequate parenting but can hold great effects on the children`s ego regard and ego image taking to depression and ineptitude. ( Rudolph, Schaffer, H, p347 ) Childs who have rational, athletic or artistic endowment which leads to fulfilment are more likely to follow acceptable tracts instead than taking into anti-social behavior, force and offense. ( Rudolph, Schaffer, H, p347 ) Where kids who come from poorness their parents may non be able to afford the fees for such activities and non be able to fund the equipment needed, this could ensue in the kid non being able to develop their endowments. ( Rudolph, Schaffer, H, p347 ) It was in 1867 that Thomas Barnado set up the Ragged School and get downing assisting the abused, vulnerable, disregarded and ignored kids of east London and his work still continues today. `Barnardo s vision today is that the lives of all kids and immature people should be free from poorness, maltreatment and favoritism. Barnardo s believe in the abused, the vulnerable, the forgotten and the ignored. We pledge to back up them, stand up for them and convey out the best in each and every child` hypertext transfer protocol: //www.barnardos.org.uk/who_we_are/history.htm A government-commissioned study on wellness inequalities will supply a cardinal influence on future public wellness policy in the UK, harmonizing to Health Secretary Frank Dobson the Acheson study published in 1998 demonstrates the being of wellness disparities and their relationship to societal category, the study calls for an addition in benefits for anticipant female parents as they have unequal diets. There is significant grounds that reduced breast-feeding, small-for-gestational-age birth weight, Fe and I deficiency, and protein-energy malnutrition ( PEM ) are associated with long-run shortages in knowledge and school accomplishment. However, all these conditions are associated with poorness and hapless wellness, harmonizing to a study by S. M. Grantham-McGregor, S. P. Walker and S. Chang hypertext transfer protocol: //journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext? type=1 A ; fid=796168 A ; jid=PNS A ; volumeId=59 A ; issueId=01 A ; aid=796156 Cognitive development are phases that kids have to go through through to understand and do sense of the universe about them as stated by Piaget ( Kehily, M, J, pg, 145, 2009 ) Besides saying that poorness has a disproportional consequence on kids, and kids under two are more expensive to look after than older kids, but Income Support degrees do non reflect this. Furthermore it states that many low income households do non hold adequate money to purchase the points and services necessary for good wellness, intending that money for nutrient is frequently used to run into exigencies. The study calls for more support for schools in disadvantaged countries, better nutrition at schools and wellness promoting schools . Promoting wellness through the course of study, offering free fresh fruit and avoid seting sweet machines on the premises. The study besides states kids from disadvantaged backgrounds achieve less at school than other kids and are more likely to travel on to acquire severely paid occupations or be unemployed. This leads to a barbarous circle of wellness jobs associated with low income and a prolongation of the poorness trap. The hapless are besid es twice every bit likely to hold drink jobs as the rich. Seventeen per cent of hapless work forces and 6 % of hapless adult females has an intoxicant job, compared with 8 % of rich work forces and 3 % of rich adult females. hypertext transfer protocol: //news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/222649.stm Work force and adult females with a lower degree of educational accomplishment tended to hold a less healthy diet harmonizing to consequences from The Low Income Diet and Nutrition Survey ( LIDNS ) . hypertext transfer protocol: //www.food.gov.uk/science/dietarysurveys/lidnsbranch/ In Britain in 1997, one place in every three was classified as a low-income family. With kids being raised in poorness were less likely to go to school on a regular footing, non come oning on to farther instruction and deriving makings to take into employment. Girls were more likely to go immature female parents and to fall into the same rhythm of want as their parents. There is a strong nexus between childhood experiences and grownup life-chances. Former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, pledged in 1999, to stop kid poorness by 2020 with an interim mark to halve child poorness by 2010/11. hypertext transfer protocol: //www.insidegovernment.co.uk/children/child_poverty/ Children life in poorness normally have to populate in hapless lodging conditions, this can take to the kid holding wellness jobs like asthma, bronchitis, life in bad lodging can do terrible ill-health and disablement before they reach in-between age. they are more likely to be absent from school, kid development suffers due to their place being cold and moistness, their chest injuries when they breathe, and non being able to kip at dark, when the warming does non work as an article by lisa Harker provinces. hypertext transfer protocol: //www.guardian.co.uk/society/2006/sep/13/comment.guardiansocietysupplementEvery Child Matters authorities programme for kid public assistance picks out wellness, safety, economic wellbeing, doing a positive part, basking and accomplishing as the critical factors that form kids s lives, there is no expressed acknowledgment of the function that lodging dramas Children s mental wellness is besides affected. Harmonizing to` The Shelter` kids are teased at school because their apparels odor of moistness, which affects assurance and they have low self-esteem. The status of the house makes it hard kids to hold friends round to play, which impacts on their societal development. hypertext transfer protocol: //image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Society/documents/2006/09/12/Lifechancereport.pdf In 1999 the Government made it a precedence to eliminate kid poorness within a coevals. The Child Poverty Bill was introduced to supply a statutory footing for the committedness made by the authorities in 1999 to eliminate child poorness by 2020. hypertext transfer protocol: //www.politics.co.uk/legislation/children-and-family/child-poverty-bill- $ 1307945.htm `Sure Start brings together child care, early instruction, wellness and family-support services for households with kids under 5 old ages old. It is the basis of the Government s thrust to undertake child poorness and societal exclusion working with parents-to-be, parents, carers and kids to advance the physical, rational and societal development of babes and immature kids so that they can boom at place and when they get to school.` hypertext transfer protocol: //www.dcsf.gov.uk/everychildmatters/earlyyears/surestart/aboutsurestart/aboutsurestart/ From April 2009 expectant female parents are able to acquire a one-off, tax-exempt payment called the Health in Pregnancy Grant. The grant is a one-off payment of ?190 the money is to assist parents with cost of a new babe. hypertext transfer protocol: //www.hmrc.gov.uk/hipg/what-is-it.htm # 1 besides a manner of promoting pregnant adult females to eat more healthily, to pass more money on fruit and veggies. This was argued by Dr Mark porter from the Times that many female parents to be would pass the grant on `booze` and `fags` instead than on enriching nutrient for their unborn. Recent research has shown that the nutritionary position of the female parent during gestation can hold a profound long-run impact on her unborn babe s wellness. This can change the babe s metamorphosis, for good increasing the likeliness of a scope of jobs in big life, including fleshiness, bosom disease and high blood force per unit area. hypertext transfer protocol: //www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_s tyle/health/features/article6086365.ece Anticipant female parents non holding the sufficient vitamin can hold greater hazard of kids developing diabetes, multiple induration and perchance even autism harmonizing to Dr Mark Porter from The Times. hypertext transfer protocol: //www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/features/article6086365.ece ADHD is associated with kids of low birth weight ; baccy, intoxicant and cocaine maltreatment during gestation although there is small grounds that ADHD can originate strictly out of societal or environmental factors such as poorness, household pandemonium, diet or hapless parent direction ( Barkley, 1990 ) . hypertext transfer protocol: //www.adhdtraining.co.uk/about.php The strong association noted in a survey between maternal mental wellness and childhood ADHD, single-parent households of lower income may be the most affected population. hypertext transfer protocol: //pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/reprint/111/5/S1/1232 The Government introduced the Child Benefit in 1977 replacing household allowances and child revenue enhancement allowances it is a tax-exempt payment that can be claimed for kids. . There are two separate sums, with a higher sum for the eldest ( or merely ) kid of ?20.00 a hebdomad ?13.20 a hebdomad for any other kids. Child Benefit is flat-rate and non age-related. `The instance for age relation is that kids become more expensive as they grow older. ` .http: //www2.rgu.ac.uk/publicpolicy/introduction/socialsecurity.htm? CFID=538533 A ; CFTOKEN=eec3c7817f178fc-6136AFC9-D609-CB06-42FF4E4FAC7FCB18 A ; jsessionid=5030a3ed25e20497a47539430a692d643d45TR Child Trust Fund ( CTF ) is a nest eggs and investing history for kids. Children born on or after 1 September 2002 will have a ?250 verifier to get down their history. The history belongs to the kid and ca nt be touched until they turn 18, so that kids have some money behind them to get down their grownup life. Working Tax Credits was introduced in 1998 with the kid attention revenue enhancement recognition lending to 70 % of child care for most households to assist them back into work. ( Pugh, G, p12, 2010 ) Harmonizing to a study by Steve Doughty, Labours Tax Credits is being blamed for the break-up of households and the doubling of divorce rates in low income households with kids. Curates acknowledge that kids being raised by married twosomes or complete household units are more likely to make better at school, have a better diet and are less likely to turn to offense and unemployment as those kids coming from individual parent households and measure households. hypertext transfer protocol: //www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1158700/Tax-credits-DO-help-break-families-Parents-encouraged-divorce-claim-higher-benefits-says-report.html Tax Credits is to fault for the excess 45,000 excess babes born annually harmonizing to research from the Fiscal Studies. With all the aid from the authorities and all the inducement strategies why do kids still populating in poorness, do parents necessitate to be better educated and should kids larn money direction at school. The Government s Every Child Matters Outcomes Framework should be revised to reflect the direct impact that lodging has on all facets of kids s life opportunities

Enlightment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Enlightment - Essay Example He considered education a tool for enlightenment which needed to be observed at all costs. Freedom of religion was also taken into consideration and was considered equally important. Frederick the Great also wrote many books about religion. He allowed his subjects to believe in any type of religion they liked (Murvar, 2013). Frederick is also considered as enlightened despot because of his contribution to promoting industry, commerce and agriculture. He reorganized the indirect taxes system, which provided the state with additional revenue than before. Additionally, Frederick the Great is considered as an enlightened despot because his mother brought him up with the educational values of the enlightenment. In his childhood, his mother tutors who were in a position to teach him poetry. French culture and the Greek classical literature. His father also insisted that he needed to be taught matters related to politics and military. Therefore, he became a military genius (Halpern, 2007). Lastly, Frederick became a patron of arts and sciences. He was also a talented musician, writing flute sonatas. At some point, he corresponded with intellectual leaders of enlightenment such as Voltaire. In his scientific work, he encouraged the Berlin academy and encouraged architects to build elaborate buildings and structures. Such structures and buildings established Berlin as a cultural capital (Halpern,

Identify the components and interfaces commonly present in J2EE Essay

Identify the components and interfaces commonly present in J2EE projects as they progress through the development and design of the distributed architecture - Essay Example In a distributed computing environment, J2EE uses a multi-tiered application model. There are the (1) the web-tier components that run on the J2EE server; (2) the business-tier components run on the J2EE server; the (3) client-tier components that run on the client machine and (4) the Enterprise information system or EIS-tier software which runs on the EIS server. A J2EE component may be defined as a self-contained functional software unit that is assembled into a J2EE application along with its related classes and files and which is able to communicate with other components using programming logic (java.sun.com). In a J2EE distributed enterprise application model therefore, the application logic is usually divided into components according to their function, and the various application components that make up a J2EE application are installed on different machines depending on the tier in the multi-tiered J2EE environment to which the application component belongs. I believe that the RUP or Rational Unified Process is the best approach for J2EE applications. This consists of the following phases: Requirements Analysis, Object Oriented Analysis, Architecture Specification, Object Design, Implementation, Validation, Assembly and Deployment, and Operation and Maintenance (Kurniawan, 2002). All in all, we see can that the main usage of the J2EE environment is to develop and deploy enterprise applications. The modern J2EE platform consists of a set of services, application programming interfaces and protocols that provide the functionality for developing multi-tiered, web-based applications in a distributed computing

Miss.Independent Essay Example for Free

Miss.Independent Essay Abstract We survey the phenomenon of the growth of ? rms drawing on literature from economics, management, and sociology. We begin with a review of empirical ‘stylised facts’ before discussing theoretical contributions. Firm growth is characterized by a predominant stochastic element, making it di? cult to predict. Indeed, previous empirical research into the determinants of ? rm growth has had a limited success. We also observe that theoretical propositions concerning the growth of ? rms are often amiss. We conclude that progress in this area requires solid empirical work, perhaps making use of novel statistical techniques. JEL codes: L25, L11 Keywords: Firm Growth, Size Distribution, Growth Rates Distribution, Gibrat’s Law, Theory of the Firm, Diversi? cation, ‘Stages of Growth’ models. ? I thank Giulio Bottazzi, Giovanni Dosi, Ha? da El-Younsi, Jacques Mairesse, Bernard Paulr? , Rekha Rao, e Angelo Secchi and Ulrich Witt for helpful comments. Nevertheless, I am solely responsible for any errors or confusion that may remain. This version: May 2007 †  Corresponding Author : Alex Coad, Max Planck Institute of Economics, Evolutionary Economics Group, Kahlaische Strasse 10, D-07745 Jena, Germany. Phone: +49 3641 686822. Fax : +49 3641 686868. E-mail : [emailprotected] mpg. de 1 #0703 Contents 1 Introduction 3 2 Empirical evidence on ? rm growth 2. 1 Size and growth rates distributions . . . . 2. 1. 1 Size distributions . . . . . . . . . . 2. 1. 2 Growth rates distributions . . . . . 2. 2 Gibrat’s Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. 2. 1 Gibrat’s model . . . . . . . . . . . 2. 2. 2 Firm size and average growth . . . 2. 2. 3 Firm size and growth rate variance 2. 2. 4 Autocorrelation of growth rates . . 2. 3 Other determinants of ? rm growth . . . . 2. 3. 1 Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. 3. 2 Innovation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. 3. 3 Financial performance . . . . . . . 2. 3. 4 Relative productivity . . . . . . . . 2. 3. 5 Other ? rm-speci? c factors . . . . . 2. 3. 6 Industry-speci? c factors . . . . . . 2. 3. 7 Macroeconomic factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 4 4 5 9 9 11 14 15 18 18 19 23 25 26 28 29 3 Theoretical contributions 3. 1 Neoclassical foundations – growth towards an ‘optimal size’ . . . . 3. 2 Penrose’s ‘Theory of the Growth of the Firm’ . . . . . . . . . . . 3. 3 Marris and ‘managerialism’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. 4 Evolutionary Economics and the principle of ‘growth of the ? tter’ 3. 5 Population ecology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 31 32 34 35 38 . . . . . . . 39 39 40 43 44 45 46 49 5 Growth of small and large ? rms 5. 1 Di? erences in growth patterns for small and large ? rms . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. 2 Modelling the ‘stages of growth’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 51 53 6 Conclusion 56 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Growth strategies 4. 1 Attitudes to growth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. 1. 1 The desirability of growth . . . . . . . . . . . 4. 1. 2 Is growth intentional or does it ‘just happen’ ? 4. 2 Growth strategies – replication or diversi? cation . . . 4. 2. 1 Growth by replication . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. 2. 2 Growth by diversi? cation . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. 3 Internal growth vs growth by acquisition . . . . . . . 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #0703 1 Introduction The aim of this survey is to provide an overview of research into the growth of ? rms, while also highlighting areas in need of further research. It is a multidisciplinary survey, drawing on contributions made in economics, management and also sociology. There are many di? erent measures of ? rm size, some of the more usual indicators being employment, total sales, value-added, total assets, or total pro? ts; and some of the less conventional ones such as ‘acres of land’ or ‘head of cattle’ (Weiss, 1998). In this survey we consider growth in terms of a range of indicators, although we devote little attention to the growth of pro? ts (this latter being more of a ? nancial than an economic variable). There are also di? erent ways of measuring growth rates. Some authors (such as Delmar et al. , 2003) make the distinction between relative growth (i. e. the growth rate in percentage terms) and absolute growth (usually measured in the absolute increase in numbers of employees). In this vein, we can mention the ‘Birch index’ which is a weighted average of both relative and absolute growth rates (this latter being taken into account to emphasize that large ? rms, due to their large size, have the potential to create many jobs). This survey focuses on relative growth rates only. Furthermore, in our discussion of the processes of expansion we emphasize positive growth and not so much negative growth. 1 In true Simonian style,2 we begin with some empirical insights in Section 2, considering ? rst the distributions of size and growth rates, and moving on to look for determinants of growth rates. We then present some theories of ? rm growth and evaluate their performance in explaining the stylised facts that emerge from empirical work (Section 3). In Section 4 we consider the demand and supply sides of growth by discussing the attitudes of ? rms towards growth opportunities as well as investigating the processes by which ? rms actually grow (growth by ‘more of the same’, growth by diversi? cation, growth by acquisition). In Section 5 we examine the di? erences between the growth of small and large ? rms in greater depth. We also review the ‘stages of growth’ models. Section 6 concludes. 2 Empirical evidence on ? rm growth To begin with, we take a non-parametric look at the distributions of ? rm size and growth rates, before moving on to results from regressions that investigate the determinants of growth rates. 1 2 For an introduction to organizational decline, see Whetten (1987). See in particular Simon (1968). 3 #0703 2. 1 Size and growth rates distributions A suitable starting point for studies into industrial structure and dynamics is the ?rm size distribution. In fact, it was by contemplating the empirical size distribution that Robert Gibrat (1931) proposed the well-known ‘Law of Proportionate E? ect’ (also known as ‘Gibrat’s law’). We also discuss the results of research into the growth rates distribution. The regularity that ? rm growth rates are approximately exponentially distributed was discovered only recently, but o? ers unique insights into the growth patterns of ? rms. 2. 1. 1 Size distributions The observation that the ? rm-size distribution is positively skewed proved to be a useful point of entry for research into the structure of industries. (See Figures 1 and 2 for some examples of aggregate ? rm size distributions. ) Robert Gibrat (1931) considered the size of French ? rms in terms of employees and concluded that the lognormal distribution was a valid heuristic. Hart and Prais (1956) presented further evidence on the size distribution, using data on quoted UK ? rms, and also concluded in favour of a lognormal model. The lognormal distribution, however, can be viewed as just one of several candidate skew distributions. Although Simon and Bonini (1958) maintained that the â€Å"lognormal generally ? ts quite well† (1958: p611), they preferred to consider the lognormal distribution as a special case in the wider family of ‘Yule’ distributions. The advantage of the Yule family of distributions was that the phenomenon of arrival of new ? rms could be incorporated into the model. Steindl (1965) applied Austrian data to his analysis of the ? rm size distribution, and preferred the Pareto distribution to the lognormal on account of its superior performance in describing the upper tail of the distribution. Similarly, Ijiri and Simon (1964, 1971, 1974) apply the Pareto distribution to analyse the size distribution oflarge US ? rms. E? orts have been made to discriminate between the various candidate skew distributions. One problem with the Pareto distribution is that the empirical density has many more middlesized ? rms and fewer very large ? rms than would be theoretically predicted (Vining, 1976). Other research on the lognormal distribution has shown that the upper tail of the empirical size distribution of ? rms is too thin relative to the lognormal (Stanley et al. , 1995). Quandt (1966) compares the performance of the lognormal and three versions of the Pareto distribution, using data disaggregated according to industry. He reports the superiority of the lognormal over the three types of Pareto distribution, although each of the distributions produces a best-? t for at least one sample. Furthermore, it may be that some industries (e. g. the footwear industry) are not ? tted well by any distribution. More generally, Quandt’s results on disaggregated data lead us to suspect that the regu4 #0703 larities of the ? rm-size distribution observed at the aggregate level do not hold with sectoral disaggregation. Silberman (1967) also ? nds signi? cant departures from lognormality in his analysis of 90 four-digit SIC sectors. It has been suggested that, while the ? rm size distribution has a smooth regular shape at the aggregate level, this may merely be due to a statistical aggregation e? ect rather than a phenomenon bearing any deeper economic meaning (Dosi et al, 1995; Dosi, 2007). Empirical results lend support to these conjectures by showing that the regular unimodal ? rm size distributions observed at the aggregate level can be decomposed into much ‘messier’ distributions at the industry level, some of which are visibly multimodal (Bottazzi and Secchi, 2003; Bottazzi et al. , 2005). For example, Bottazzi and Secchi (2005) present evidence of signi? cant bimodality in the ? rm size distribution of the worldwide pharmaceutical industry, and relate this to a cleavage between the industry leaders and fringe competitors. Other work on the ? rm-size distribution has focused on the evolution of the shape of the distribution over time. It would appear that the initial size distribution for new ? rms is particularly right-skewed, although the log-size distribution tends to become more symmetric as time goes by. This is consistent with observations that small young ? rms grow faster than their larger counterparts. As a result, it has been suggested that the log-normal can be seen as a kind of ‘limit distribution’ to which a given cohort of ? rms will eventually converge. Lotti and Santarelli (2001) present support for this hypothesis by tracking cohorts of new ? rms in several sectors of Italian manufacturing. Cabral and Mata (2003) ? nd similar results in their analysis of cohorts of new Portuguese ? rms. However, Cabral and Mata interpret their results by referring to ? nancial constraints that restrict the scale of operations for new ? rms, but become less binding over time, thus allowing these small ?rms to grow relatively rapidly and reach their preferred size. They also argue that selection does not have a strong e? ect on the evolution of market structure. Although the skewed nature of the ? rm size distribution is a robust ? nding, there may be some other features of this distribution that are speci? c to countries. Table 1, taken from Bartelsman et al. (2005), highlights some di? erences in the structure of industries across countries. Among other things, one observes that large ? rms account for a considerable share of French industry, whereas in Italy ? rms tend to be much smaller on average. (These international di? erences cannot simply be attributed to di? erences in sectoral specialization across countries. ) 2. 1. 2 Growth rates distributions It has long been known that the distribution of ? rm growth rates is fat-tailed. In an early contribution, Ashton (1926) considers the growth patterns of British textile ? rms and observes 5 US 86. 7 69. 9 87. 9 16. 6 5. 8 Western Germany 87. 9 77. 9 90. 2 23. 6 11. 3 78. 6 73. 6 78. 8 13. 9 17. 0 France Italy 93. 1 87. 5 96. 5 34. 4 30. 3 74. 9 8. 3 UK Canada Denmark 90. 0 74. 0 90. 8 30. 2 16. 1 92. 6 84. 8 94. 5 25. 8 13. 0 Finland Netherlands 95. 8 86. 7 96. 8 31. 2 16. 9 86. 3 70. 5 92. 8 27. 7 15. 7 Portugal Source: Bartelsman et al. (2005: Tables 2 and 3). Notes: the columns labelled ‘share of employment’ refer to the employment share 6 26. 4 17. 0 33. 5 10. 5 12. 7 13. 3 13. 0 6. 5 16. 8 Total economy 80. 3 39. 1 32. 1 15. 3 40. 7 40. 5 30. 4 27. 8 18. 3 31. 0 Manufacturing 21. 4 11. 5 35. 7 6. 8 12. 0 12. 7 9. 9 5. 3 11. 4 Business services Ave. No. Employees per ? rm of ? rms with fewer than 20 employees. 20. 6 33. 8 12. 1 46. 3 33. 4 33. 0 41. 9 39. 8 Business services Total economy Manufacturing Share of employment (%) Business services Total economy. Manufacturing Absolute number (%) Table 1: The importance of small ? rms (i. e. ?rms with fewer than 20 employees) across broad sectors and countries, 1989-94 #0703 #0703 1 Pr 1998 2000 2002 0. 1 0. 01 0. 001 1e-04 -4 -2 0 s 2 4 6 Figure 1: Kernel estimates of the density of ?rm size (total sales) in 1998, 2000 and 2002, for French manufacturing ? rms with more than 20 employees. Source: Bottazzi et al. , 2005. Figure 2: Probability density function of the sizes of US manufacturing ? rms in 1997. Source: Axtell, 2001. that â€Å"In their growth they obey no one law. A few apparently undergo a steady expansion.. . With others, increase in size takes place by a sudden leap† (Ashton 1926: 572-573). Little (1962) investigates the distribution of growth rates, and also ? nds that the distribution is fat-tailed. Similarly, Geroski and Gugler (2004) compare the distribution of growth rates to the normal case and comment on the fat-tailed nature of the empirical density. Recent empirical research, from an ‘econophysics’ background, has discovered that the distribution of ? rm growth rates closely follows the parametric form of the Laplace density. Using the Compustat database of US manufacturing ? rms, Stanley et al. (1996) observe a ‘tent-shaped’ distribution on log-log plots that corresponds to the symmetric exponential, or Laplace distribution (see also Amaral et al. (1997) and Lee et al. (1998)). The quality of the ? t of the empirical distribution to the Laplace density is quite remarkable. The Laplace distribution is also found to be a rather useful representation when considering growth rates of ? rms in the worldwide pharmaceutical industry (Bottazzi et al. , 2001). Giulio Bottazzi and coauthors extend these ? ndings by considering the Laplace density in the wider context of the family of Subbotin distributions (beginning with Bottazzi et al., 2002). They ? nd that, for the Compustat database, the Laplace is indeed a suitable distribution for modelling ? rm growth rates, at both aggregate and disaggregated levels of analysis (Bottazzi and Secchi 2003a). The exponential nature of the distribution of growth rates also holds for other databases, such as Italian manufacturing (Bottazzi et al. (2007)). In addition, the exponential distribution appears to hold across a variety of ? rm growth indicators, such as Sales growth, employment growth or Value Added growth (Bottazzi et al. , 2007). The growth rates of French manufacturing ? rms have also been studied, and roughly speaking a similar shape was observed, although it must be said that the empirical density was noticeably fatter-tailed than the Laplace (see Bottazzi et al. , 2005). 3 3 The observed subbotin b parameter (the ‘shape’ parameter) is signi? cantly lower than the Laplace value of 1. This highlights the importance of following Bottazzi et al. (2002) and considering the Laplace as a special 7 #0703 1998 2000 2002 1998 2000 2002 1 prob. prob. 1 0. 1 0. 01 0. 1 0. 01 0. 001 0. 001 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 -2 -1. 5 -1 conditional growth rate -0. 5 0 0. 5 1 1. 5 2 conditional growth rate. Figure 3: Distribution of sales growth rates of French manufacturing ? rms. Source: Bottazzi et al. , 2005. Figure 4: Distribution of employment growth rates of French manufacturing ? rms. Source: Coad, 2006b. Research into Danish manufacturing ? rms presents further evidence that the growth rate distribution is heavy-tailed, although it is suggested that the distribution for individual sectors may not be symmetric but right-skewed (Reichstein and Jensen (2005)). Generally speaking, however, it would appear that the shape of the growth rate distribution is more robust to disaggregation than the shape of the ?rm size distribution. In other words, whilst the smooth shape of the aggregate ? rm size distribution may be little more than a statistical aggregation e? ect, the ‘tent-shapes’ observed for the aggregate growth rate distribution are usually still visible even at disaggregated levels (Bottazzi and Secchi, 2003a; Bottazzi et al. , 2005). This means that extreme growth events can be expected to occur relatively frequently, and make a disproportionately large contribution to the evolution of industries. Figures 3 and 4 show plots of the distribution of sales and employment growth rates for French manufacturing ?rms with over 20 employees. Although research suggests that both the size distribution and the growth rate distribution are relatively stable over time, it should be noted that there is great persistence in ? rm size but much less persistence in growth rates on average (more on growth rate persistence is presented in Section 2. 2. 4). As a result, it is of interest to investigate how the moments of the growth rates distribution change over the business cycle. Indeed, several studies have focused on these issues and some preliminary results can be mentioned here. It has been suggested that the variance of growth rates changes over time for the employment growth of large US ? rms (Hall, 1987) and that this variance is procyclical in the case of growth of assets (Geroski et al. , 2003). This is consistent with the hypothesis that ? rms have a lot of discretion in their growth rates of assets during booms but face stricter discipline during recessions. Higson et al. (2002, 2004) consider the evolution of the ? rst four moments of distributions of the growth of sales, for large US and UK ?rms over periods of 30 years or more. They observe that higher moments of the distribution of sales growth rates have signi? cant cyclical patterns. In case in the Subbotin family of distributions. 8 #0703 particular, evidence from both US and UK ? rms suggests that the variance and skewness are countercyclical, whereas the kurtosis is pro-cyclical. Higson et al. (2002: 1551) explain the counter-cyclical movements in skewness in these words: â€Å"The central mass of the growth rate distribution responds more strongly to the aggregate shock than the tails. So a negative shock moves the central mass closer to the left of the distribution leaving the right tail behind and generates positive skewness. A positive shock shifts the central mass to the right, closer to the group of rapidly growing ? rms and away from the group of declining ? rms. So negative skewness results. † The procyclical nature of kurtosis (despite their puzzling ? nding of countercyclical variance) emphasizes that economic downturns change the shape of the growth rate distribution by reducing a key parameter of the ‘spread’ or ‘variation’ between ? rms. 2. 2 Gibrat’s Law. Gibrat’s law continues to receive a huge amount of attention in the empirical industrial organization literature, more than 75 years after Gibrat’s (1931) seminal publication. We begin by presenting the ‘Law’, and then review some of the related empirical literature. We do not attempt to provide an exhaustive survey of the literature on Gibrat’s law, because the number of relevant studies is indeed very large. (For other reviews of empirical tests of Gibrat’s Law, the reader is referred to the survey by Lotti et al (2003); for a survey of how Gibrat’s law holds for the services sector see Audretsch et al. (2004). ) Instead, we try to provide an overview of the essential results. We investigate how expected growth rates and growth rate variance are in? uenced by ? rm size, and also investigate the possible existence of patterns of serial correlation in ? rm growth. 2. 2. 1 Gibrat’s model Robert Gibrat’s (1931) theory of a ‘law of proportionate e? ect’ was hatched when he observed that the distribution of French manufacturing establishments followed a skew distribution that resembled the lognormal. Gibrat considered the emergence of the ?rm-size distribution as an outcome or explanandum and wanted to see which underlying growth process could be responsible for generating it. In its simplest form, Gibrat’s law maintains that the expected growth rate of a given ? rm is independent of its size at the beginning of the period examined. Alternatively, as Mans? eld (1962: 1030) puts it, â€Å"the probability of a given proportionate change in size during a speci? ed 9 #0703 period is the same for all ? rms in a given industry – regardless of their size at the beginning of the period. † More formally, we can explain the growth of ? rms in the following framework. Let xt be the size of a ? rm at time t, and let ? t be random variable representing an idiosyncratic, multiplicative growth shock over the period t ? 1 to t. We have xt ? xt? 1 = ? t xt? 1 (1) xt = (1 + ? t )xt? 1 = x0 (1 + ? 1 )(1 + ? 2 ) . . . (1 + ? t ) (2) which can be developed to obtain It is then possible to take logarithms in order to approximate log(1 + ? t ) by ? t to obtain4 t log(xt ) ? log(x0 ) + ? 1 + ? 2 + . . . + ? t = log(x0 ) + ?s (3) s=1 In the limit, as t becomes large, the log(x0 ) term will become insigni? cant, and we obtain t log(xt ) ? ?s (4) s=1 In this way, a ? rm’s size at time t can be explained purely in terms of its idiosyncratic history of multiplicative shocks. If we further assume that all ? rms in an industry are independent realizations of i. i. d. normally distributed growth shocks, then this stochastic process leads to the emergence of a lognormal ? rm size distribution. There are of course several serious limitations to such a simple vision of industrial dynamics. We have already seen that the distribution of growth rates is not normally distributed, but instead resembles the Laplace or ‘symmetric exponential’. Furthermore, contrary to results implied by Gibrat’s model, it is not reasonable to suppose that the variance of ? rm size tends to in? nity (Kalecki, 1945). In addition, we do not observe the secular and unlimited increase in industrial concentration that would be predicted by Gibrat’s law (Caves, 1998). Whilst a ‘weak’ version of Gibrat’s law merely supposes that expected growth rate is independent of ?rm size, stronger versions of Gibrat’s law imply a range of other issues. For example, Chesher (1979) rejects Gibrat’s law due to the existence of an autocorrelation structure in the growth shocks. Bottazzi and Secchi (2006a) reject Gibrat’s law on the basis of a negative relationship between growth rate variance and ? rm size. Reichstein and Jensen (2005) reject Gibrat’s law 4 This logarithmic approximation is only justi? ed if ? t is ‘small’ enough (i. e. close to zero), which can be reasonably assumed by taking a short time period (Sutton, 1997). 10 #0703after observing that the annual growth rate distribution is not normally distributed. 2. 2. 2 Firm size and average growth Although Gibrat’s (1931) seminal book did not provoke much of an immediate reaction, in recent decades it has spawned a ? ood of empirical work. Nowadays, Gibrat’s ‘Law of Proportionate E? ect’ constitutes a benchmark model for a broad range of investigations into industrial dynamics. Another possible reason for the popularity of research into Gibrat’s law, one could suggest quite cynically, is that it is a relatively easy paper to write. First of all, it has been argued that there is a minimalistic theoretical background behind the process (because growth is assumed to be purely random). Then, all that needs to be done is to take the IO economist’s ‘favourite’ variable (i. e. ?rm size, a variable which is easily observable and readily available) and regress the di? erence on the lagged level. In addition, few control variables are required beyond industry dummies and year dummies, because growth rates are characteristically random. Empirical investigations of Gibrat’s law rely on estimation of equations of the type: log(xt ) = ?+ ? log(xt? 1 ) + (5) where a ? rm’s ‘size’ is represented by xt , ? is a constant term (industry-wide growth trend) and is a residual error. Research into Gibrat’s law focuses on the coe? cient ?. If ? rm growth is independent of size, then ? takes the value of unity. If ? is smaller than one, then smaller ? rms grow faster than their larger counterparts, and we can speak of ‘regression to the mean’. Conversely, if ? is larger than one, then larger ? rms grow relatively rapidly and there is a tendency to concentration and monopoly. A signi?cant early contribution was made by Edwin Mans? eld’s (1962) study of the US steel, petroleum, and rubber tire industries. In particular interest here is what Mans? eld identi? ed as three di? erent renditions of Gibrat’s law. According to the ? rst, Gibrat-type regressions consist of both surviving and exiting ? rms and attribute a growth rate of -100% to exiting ? rms. However, one caveat of this approach is that smaller ? rms have a higher exit hazard which may obfuscate the relationship between size and growth. The second version, on the other hand, considers only those ?rms that survive. Research along these lines has typically shown that smaller ? rms have higher expected growth rates than larger ? rms. The third version considers only those large surviving ? rms that are already larger than the industry Minimum E? cient Scale of production (with exiting ? rms often being excluded from the analysis). Generally speaking, empirical analysis corresponding to this third approach suggests that growth rates are more or less independent from ? rm size, which lends support to Gibrat’s law. 11 #0703 The early studies focused on large ? rms only, presumably partly due to reasons of data availability. A series of papers analyzing UK manufacturing ? rms found a value of ? greater than unity, which would indicate a tendency for larger ? rms to have higher percentage growth rates (Hart (1962), Samuels (1965), Prais (1974), Singh and Whittington (1975)). However, the majority of subsequent studies using more recent datasets have found values of ? slightly lower than unity, which implies that, on average, small ? rms seem to grow faster than larger ? rms. This result is frequently labelled ‘reversion to the mean size’ or ‘mean-reversion’. 5 Among a large and growing body of research that reports a negative relationship between size and growth, we can mention here the work by Kumar (1985) and Dunne and Hughes (1994) for quoted UK manufacturing ? rms, Hall (1987), Amirkhalkhali and Mukhopadhyay (1993) and Bottazzi and Secchi (2003) for quoted US manufacturing ? rms (see also Evans (1987a, 1987b) for US manufacturing ? rms of a somewhat smaller size), Gabe and Kraybill (2002) for establishments in Ohio, and Goddard et al. (2002) for quoted Japanese manufacturing ? rms. Studies focusing on small businesses have also found a negative relationship between ? rm size and expected growth – see for example Yasuda (2005) for Japanese manufacturing ? rms, Calvo (2006) for Spanish manufacturing, McPherson (1996) for Southern African micro businesses, and Wagner (1992) and Almus and Nerlinger (2000) for German manufacturing. Dunne et al. (1989) analyse plant-level data (as opposed to ? rm-level data) and also observe that growth rates decline along size classes. Research into Gibrat’s law using data for speci? c sectors also ? nds that small ? rms grow relatively faster (see e. g. Barron et al. (1994) for New York credit unions, Weiss (1998) for Austrian farms, Liu et al. (1999) for Taiwanese electronics plants, and Bottazzi and Secchi (2005) for an analysis of the worldwide pharmaceutical sector). Indeed, there is a lot of evidence that a slight negative dependence of growth rate on size is present at various levels of industrial aggregation. Although most empirical investigations into Gibrat’s law consider only the manufacturing sector, some have focused on the services sector. The results, however, are often qualitatively similar – there appears to be a negative relationship between size and expected growth rate for services too (see Variyam and Kraybill (1992), Johnson et al. (1999)) Nevertheless, it should be mentioned that in some cases a weak version of Gibrat’s law cannot be convincingly rejected, since there appears to be no signi? cant relationship between expected growth rate and size (see the analyses provided by Bottazzi et al. (2005) for French manufacturing ? rms, Droucopoulos (1983) for the world’s largest ? rms, Hardwick and Adams (2002) for UK Life Insurance companies, and Audretsch et al. (2004) for small-scale Dutch services). Notwithstanding these latter studies, however, we acknowledge that in most cases a negative relationship between ? rm size and growth is observed. Indeed, 5 We should be aware, however, that ‘mean-reversion’ does not imply that ? rms are converging to anything resembling a common steady-state size, even within narrowly-de? ned industries (see in particular the empirical work by Geroski et al. (2003) and Ce? s et al. (2006)). 12 #0703 it is quite common for theoretically-minded authors to consider this to be a ‘stylised fact’ for the purposes of constructing and validating economic models (see for example Cooley and Quadrini (2001), Gomes (2001) and Clementi and Hopenhayn (2006)). Furthermore, John Sutton refers to this negative dependence of growth on size as a ‘statistical regularity’ in his revered survey of Gibrat’s law (Sutton, 1997: 46). A number of researchers maintain that Gibrat’s law does hold for ? rms above a certain size threshold. This corresponds to acceptance of Gibrat’s law according to Mans? eld’s third rendition, although ‘mean reversion’ leads us to reject Gibrat’s Law as described in Mans? eld’s second rendition. Mowery (1983), for example, analyzes two samples of ? rms, one of which contains small ? rms while the other contains large ? rms. Gibrat’s law is seen to hold in the latter sample, whereas mean reversion is observed in the former. Hart and Oulton (1996) consider a large sample of UK ? rms and ? nd that, whilst mean reversion is observed in the pooled data, a decomposition of the sample according to size classes reveals essentially no relation between size and growth for the larger ? rms. Lotti et al. (2003) follow a cohort of new Italian startups and ? nd that, although smaller ? rms initially grow faster, it becomes more di? cult to reject the independence of size and growth as time passes. Similarly, results reported by Becchetti and Trovato (2002) for Italian manufacturing ? rms, Geroski and Gugler (2004) for large European ? rms and Ce? s et al. (2006) for the worldwide pharmaceutical industry also ? nd that the growth of large ? rms is independent of their size, although including smaller ? rms in the analysis introduces a dependence of growth on size. It is of interest to remark that Caves (1998) concludes his survey of industrial dynamics with the ‘substantive conclusion’ that Gibrat’s law holds for ? rms above a certain size threshold, whilst for smaller ? rms growth rates decrease with size. Concern about econometric issues has often been raised. Sample selection bias, or ‘sample attrition’, is one of the main problems, because smaller ? rms have a higher probability of exit. Failure to account for the fact that exit hazards decrease with size may lead to underestimation of the regression coe? cient (i. e. ?). Hall (1987) was among the ? rst to tackle the problem of sample selection, using a Tobit model.