Stylised facts about Slovenian high-growth firms

The paper analyses high-growth firms in Slovenia over two three-year periods: 2007-2010 and 2011-2014. The analysis has been carried out for four stylised facts on high-growth firms established in the literature: (1) growth-rate distributions are heavy-tailed; (2) different growth indicators select different high-growth firms; (3) a small share of high-growth firms generates a large share of jobs; and (4) high-growth firms are not more common in high-tech industries. The results find the growth-rate distributions to be heavy-tailed, but also somewhat asymmetric and thicker than the Laplace tails. The paper shows that different indicators indeed select different high-growth firms, which is especially evident when comparing employment- and revenue-based selected firms. Furthermore, Slovenia has a smaller share of high-growth firms compared to more developed countries like the United Kingdom and Sweden; however, this smaller share of firms does contribute to a large share of jobs created, but the effect is not as large as in more developed countries. The analysis also confirms the significant effect of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises on overall job creation. Finally, only a small portion of high-growth firms can be found in high-tech sectors in Slovenia.