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EmployeesAssociate Researcher

Alex Coad

Contact information

Phone: 01273 877128
Email: alex.coad@waseda.jp

Alexander Coad is an associated researcher to The Ratio Institute. More about his research can be read here.

Related publications

Article (with peer review)

Amundsen versus Scott: are growth paths related to firm performance?

Coad, A., Daunfeldt, SO. & Halvarsson, D.

Publication year

2022

Published in

Small Business Economics 59, 593–610 (2022).

Abstract

In the race to the South Pole, Roald Amundsen’s expedition covered an equal distance each day, irrespective of weather conditions, while Scott’s pace was erratic. Amundsen won the race and returned without loss of life, while Scott and his men died. In the context of firm growth, the Amundsen hypothesis suggests that smoother growth paths are associated with better performance in subsequent periods. We develop a new method to investigate how firms’ sales growth deviates from their long-run average growth path. Our baseline results suggest that growth path volatility is associated with higher growth of sales and profits, but also with higher exit rates. However, this result is driven by firms with negative growth rates. For positive-growth firms, volatility is negatively associated with both sales growth and survival, providing nuanced support for the Amundsen hypothesis.

The article can be accessed here.

Article (with peer review)

John Haltiwanger: recipient of the 2020 Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research

Coad, A., Andersson, M., Henrekson, M., Jack, S., Stenkula, M., Thorburn, K., Wennberg, K. & Zander, I. (2022).

Publication year

2022

Published in

Small Business Economics, 58(1), 15-25.

Abstract

The 2020 Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research has been awarded to Professor John Haltiwanger. John Haltiwanger has made significant contributions to the field of entrepreneurship by improving our understanding of job creation and destruction, productivity growth, and the role of small- and medium-sized firms (SMEs) in economic development. He has played a major role in the careful development of large, longitudinal firm-level datasets, and introduced a novel and widely adopted measure of firm growth that addresses previous statistical biases. His work has influenced public policy and national statistical offices around the world.

Article (with peer review)

Bursting into life: firm growth and growth persistence by age

Coad, A., Daunfeldt, S-O., & Halvarsson, D.

Publication year

2018

Published in

Small Business Economics

Abstract

Is firm growth more persistent for young or old firms? Theory gives us no clear guidance, and previous empirical investigations have been hampered by a lack of detailed data on firm age, as well as a non-representative coverage of young firms. We overcome these shortcomings using a rich dataset on all limited liability firms in Sweden during 1998–2008, covering firms of all ages and information on registered start year. Sales growth for new ventures is characterized by positive persistence, which quickly turns negative as firms get older. Young firms are more likely to have two consecutive periods of positive growth. While new firms experience an early burst of sustained growth, older firms have more erratic growth paths.
Related content: Working Paper No. 264

Article (with peer review)

Barriers to innovation and firm productivity

Coad, A., Pellegrino, G., & Savona, M.

Publication year

2016

Published in

Economics of Innovation and New Technology

Abstract

The paper analyzes the effect of financial, knowledge, demand, market structure and regulation barriers to innovation on firms’ economic performance. It contributes to the literature on barriers to innovation by accounting for the heterogeneous effects that each barrier has on firms across the productivity distribution. We do so by employing both quantile regression techniques and matching estimators on this UK CIS panel 2002–2010 merged with the Business Structure Database. While we find evidence that both the cost and also the availability of finance negatively affect productivity across the whole distribution, the lack of qualified personnel mostly hinders high productivity firms. Moreover, quantile regression reveals some interesting variation in effect sizes across the (conditional) productivity distribution.

Working paper

Ratio Working Paper No. 264: Bursting into life: Firm growth and growth persistence by age

Coad, A, Daunfeldt, S-O, Halvarsson, d

Publication year

2015

Published in

Abstract

Is firm growth more persistent for young or old firms? Theory gives us no clear answer, and previous empirical investigations have been hampered by a lack of detailed data on firm age, as well as a non-representative coverage of young firms. We overcome these shortcomings using a rich dataset on all limited liability firms
in Sweden during 1997-2010, covering firms of all ages and information on registered start year. We find that sales growth for new ventures is characterized by positive persistence, whereas it quickly turns negative and remains negative as firms get older. It thus seems that the growth paths of older firms are buffeted around by environmental turbulence, and that older firms may have challenges in adapting their strategies to changing market conditions, whereas new firms experience an early burst of sustained growth.

Book chapter

Measuring business activity in the UK

Frankish, J., Roberts, R., Storey, D. J. & Coad, A.

Publication year

2015

Published in

Handbook of Service Business – Management, Marketing, Innovation and Internationalisation

Abstract

Extract: Since small businesses and enterprise were ‘discovered’ by public policy in the UK during the 1960s, commencing in earnest with the publication of the Bolton Committee (1971) report, there has been considerable official interest in this form of economic activity. The Conservative Government from 1979 to 1997 initially saw enterprise as a strategy for job creation but later switched to a focus on growth. The Labour Government after 1997 continued this ‘cross-party’ support, although it placed greater weight upon the potential role of enterprise to address wider issues of ‘social inclusion’, e.g. HM Treasury (1999), than its predecessor government. The election of a Conservative-led coalition in 2010, faced with a challenging macro-economic environment, meant that once again small businesses and enterprise creation were seen as playing a critical role in a UK economy seeking to emerge from recession (Greene, 2002; Greene et al., 2008).

Article (with peer review)

Whom do high-growth firms hire?

Coad, A., Daunfeldt, S.-O., Johansson, D. & Wennberg, K.

Publication year

2014

Published in

Industrial and Corporate Change

Abstract

We study employment and new hires among high-growth firms (HGFs) in the Swedish knowledge-intensive sectors 1999–2002. Using matched employer–employee data, we find that HGFs are more likely to employ young people, poorly educated workers, immigrants, and individuals who experienced longer unemployment periods. However, these patterns seem contingent on the stage of the firm’s evolution. HGFs that have already realized some rapid growth are more likely to hire individuals from other firms, even though immigrants are still overrepresented among new hires. In the case of both HGF employees and HGF new hires, employment opportunities in HGFs are provided by young and small firms.

Related content: Working Paper No. 169

Article (with peer review)

Two’s Company: Composition, Structure and Performance of Entrepreneurial Pairs

Coad, A. & Timmermans, B.

Publication year

2014

Published in

European Management Review

Abstract

We explore the effects of diverse team composition on the survival and growth of new ventures using the Danish Linked Employer-Employee database. To get cleaner measures of diverse team composition, we focus on entrepreneurial dyads, and also investigate the asymmetric hierarchical effects of team composition by distinguishing between the ‘primary’ and the ‘secondary’ member. We complement existing work by showing that heterogeneity in team composition is moderated by the asymmetric hierarchical structure within the team, and that a unidimensional diversity indicator (which is usually applied) fails to capture a number of performance effects of heterogeneous team composition. Pairs of younger individuals have lower survival chances but higher employment growth. Pairs led by a male tend toward ‘jobless growth’ in the sense that they have higher growth of profits and sales but not employment. Family firms have lower employment growth, especially when formed with one’s mother.

Article (with peer review)

Growth paths and survival chances

Coad, A., Frankish, J., Roberts, R. G., & Storey, D. J.

Publication year

2013

Published in

Journal of Business Venturing

Abstract

This paper links new firm survival with growth, with a focus on the patterns in firms’ growth paths. We theorise a Gambler’s Ruin framework by arguing that new firm performance is best modelled as a random walk process, but that survival is nonrandom and depends primarily on the stock of accumulated resources. A firm’s resources are either there when the business begins or are generated by successful periods — ‘wins’. The empirical section tracks, over six years, the sales and survival/non-survival of 6247 UK start-ups which all began trading in the same quarter of 2004. We do not find strong evidence in favour of a taxonomy of growth paths, because we observe that every possible growth path seems to occur with roughly equal probability. However, we observe that growth paths influence subsequent survival. Controlling for lagged size, we observe that longer lags of growth, and even start-up size, have significant effects on survival.

Related content: Working Paper No. 204

Article (with peer review)

“I’m afraid I have bad news for you…”

Binder, M., Coad, A.

Publication year

2013

Published in

Länk till artikel

Abstract

Bad health can severely disrupt a person’s life. We apply matching estimators to examine how changes in subjective health status as well as different (objective) conditions of bad health affect subjective well-being. The strongest effect is in the category alcohol and drug abuse, followed by anxiety, depression and other mental illnesses, stroke, diabetes and cancer. We also take into account differences in “Big Five” personality traits. Adaptation to health impairments depends strongly on the health impairment examined. There is also a puzzling asymmetry: strong adverse reactions to deteriorations in health are observed alongside weak increases in well-being after health improvements.

Binder, M., Coad, A. (2013). ”I’m afraid I have bad news for you…” Estimating the impact of different health impairments on subjective well-being. Social Science & Medicine, 87(2013), 155–167.