<p>Compustat Annual is used in <a href="http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~xgabaix/papers/ceoPay.pdf" rel="nofollow">Gabaix and Landier (2008)</a>. A famous stylized fact is the power-law distribution (<a href="http://ssrn.com/abstract=1257822" rel="nofollow">by Gabaix again</a>) of firm sizes. But power-law claims have been criticized as resulting from poor measurement.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-04-15T18:12:37.407Z
I would be interested in reading a citation of the measurement error criticisms.
BKay
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-04-15T22:56:14.790Z
[Clauset, Shalizi, Newman (2009) SIAM Review](http://epubs.siam.org/doi/abs/10.1137/070710111)
Sander Heinsalu
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-04-15T04:47:14.750Z
2015-04-15T04:47:14.750Z
Sander Heinsalu
<p>What are public sources for US firm/plant sizes, in order to characterize the firm size distribution? And what are stylized facts about the firm size distribution: What does it approximate to? </p>

<p>Somewhat related: What about the firm age distribution? That is, the distribution of firms given their age. I understand the latter is a soft concept in the data, but are there first-order approximations for age, and how does its distribution look?</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-12-21T06:31:58.300Z
I've actually looked into the latter some, and can only offer anecdotally that firm age and size are not correlated as the oldest companies (Beretta, Kongō Gumi, etc) are not remarkably large. Wikipedia has some soft data [here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies)
Jason Nichols
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-12-21T23:16:37.203Z
http://www.census.gov/ces/dataproducts/datasets/lbd.html - the obvious starting point is the official stats portal...
Deer Hunter
<data-request><firm><micro-data>
Distribution of firm sizes and firm age
FooBar
# Distribution of firm sizes and firm age

(Asked by: username_0 on 2014-12-20)

What are public sources for US firm/plant sizes, in order to characterize the firm size distribution? And what are stylized facts about the firm size distribution: What does it approximate to?

Somewhat related: What about the firm age distribution? That is, the distribution of firms given their age. I understand the latter is a soft concept in the data, but are there first-order approximations for age, and how does its distribution look?

**Tags:** data-request, firm, micro-data

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: I've actually looked into the latter some, and can only offer anecdotally that firm age and size are not correlated as the oldest companies (Beretta, Kongō Gumi, etc) are not remarkably large. Wikipedia has some soft data [here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies)  
> **username_2**: http://www.census.gov/ces/dataproducts/datasets/lbd.html - the obvious starting point is the official stats portal...  

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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_3 on 2015-04-15. Score: 3

Compustat Annual is used in [Gabaix and Landier (2008)](http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~xgabaix/papers/ceoPay.pdf). A famous stylized fact is the power-law distribution ([by Gabaix again](http://ssrn.com/abstract=1257822)) of firm sizes. But power-law claims have been criticized as resulting from poor measurement.

> **Comments:**
> **username_4**: I would be interested in reading a citation of the measurement error criticisms.  
> **username_3**: [Clauset, Shalizi, Newman (2009) SIAM Review](http://epubs.siam.org/doi/abs/10.1137/070710111)  

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