PROGRAMS USED IN “THE INDUSTRY LIFE-CYCLE OF THE SIZE DISTRIBUTION OF FIRMS”

This Readme file describes the main programs used in generating the tables and figures for the article “The Industry Life-Cycle of the Size Distribution of Firms”, by Emin Dinlersoz and Glenn MacDonald.

We note that because the data used in this paper is confidential census data (Census of Manufacturers) we were not provided any programs that may reveal detailed information about the data we used. Furthermore, due to disclosure restrictions imposed by the census bureau, we are unable to release any statistics other than those already reported in the paper. 

The basic procedure to obtain all the tables and the figures in the paper is as follows. First, the relevant variables from Census of Manufacturers dataset for the years 1963, 1967, 1972, 1977, 1982, 1987, 1992, and 1997 for the industries used in our study are combined. This combined dataset is then used to generate Tables 2-5 and Figures 2-6 in the paper. Additional programs that generate results that are not in the tables or figures but stated elsewhere in the paper are also included to the extent disclosed to us. 

A brief description of each program is as follows:

1. Program “moment_growth_stats.do” is a STATA do file that generates the basic growth statistics for the number of firms and for firm size moments that underlie Tables 2 and 4. This program uses the combined data from the Census of Manufactures as an input. Its output is a set of statistics that describe the growth of the moments of firm size for each industry in our sample.

2. Program “moments_by_phase.do” is a STATA do file that generates the statistics pertaining to growth rates and the t-tests for the comparison of mean growth rates as shown in Tables 2 and 4, and the estimated regression coefficients in Tables 3 and 5. This program uses the output of “moment_growth_stats.do” as an input.

3. Program “examples.do” is a STATA do file that is used to generate figures for the industries used as examples. The figures we present in the paper (Figures 2-6) pertain to the Electronic Computers Industry (SIC 3571). The program that generates these figures, “SIC3571.do”, was not released to us separately due to disclosure concerns. It is included as a do file in “examples.do”, but the individual lines for this code were not made available to us. 

4. Program “ks.do” is a STATA do file that generates the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test statistics used to test for equality of firm size distributions over time, as discussed in Section 4.2 and footnote 21. The test statistics are not presented in the paper as a table, but the results of the test is summarized in Section 4.2.

Please contact Emin Dinlersoz (edinlersoz@cornerstone.com or edinlersoz@gmail.com) for further questions on these programs.