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How far do Gazelles run? - growth patterns of regular firms, high growth firms and startups

  • Ramy El-Dardiry
  • , Benedikt Vogt*
  • *Corresponding author for this work
  • CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

8 Citations (Scopus)
152 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

High growth firms receive a lot attention from policy and academia. In this paper we investigate the general validity of an investor startup database in studying high growth firms and growth persistence. To do so, we match Dutch administrative firm level panel data with this startup database. We establish two main facts. First, although the vast majority of high growth firms in the Dutch economy does not appear in the database, included firms do have a higher probability of being a high growth firm. Second, in contrast to regular Dutch firms and previous findings in the literature, startups show a strikingly persistent growth pattern: their growth phases are prolonged. We conclude that commercial startup databases can complement more traditional data sources, but interpretation requires care due to unclear selection in the database.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)4304-4318
Number of pages15
JournalApplied Economics
Volume55
Issue number37
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2023

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Tim Oudenampsen provided excellent research assistance at the beginning of the project. We are especially thankful to Mark Kattenberg for his valuable comments on the estimation strategy. We also thank Rob Aalbers, Clemens Domnick, Bastiaan Overvest, Erik Stam and seminar participants at the CPB, Utrecht University, the European Commission (virtual), the Joint Research Centre in Sevilla (virtual) and the OECD for their input (virtual).

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Centraal Planbureau.

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