Firm growth, export behavior, and the age-size profile: evidence from the Italian manufacturing sector

(There is no abstract. I paste the beginning of the Introduction) An important stream of literature within industrial economics has for long been interested in assessing the contribution to employment creation stemming from the different firm-size classes. In this respect, at least since Birch (1981), small firms have been considered as a much relevant source of job creation. The increasing availability of firm level dataset has further contributed to foster research on the issue, starting from the seminal works of Davis and Haltiwanger (1992) and Davis et al. (1996). These studies represented a relevant advancement for the understanding of employment and industrial dynamics, in that they confirmed, by means of new methodological and empirical tools, that smaller firms are major players in terms of job churning, hence contributing both to employment creation and destruction.