Title: Measuring business dynamics among incumbent firms in The Netherlands

Authors: Mickey Folkeringa, Andre Van Stel, Kashifa Suddle, Sita Tan

Addresses: EIM Business and Policy Research, P.O. Box 7001, 2701 AA Zoetermeer, The Netherlands. ' EIM Business and Policy Research, P.O. Box 7001, 2701 AA Zoetermeer, The Netherlands. ' KPN Telecom, P.O. Box 30000, 2516 CK The Hague, The Netherlands. ' EIM Business and Policy Research, P.O. Box 7001, 2701 AA Zoetermeer, The Netherlands

Abstract: Business dynamics in an industry is generally seen as an important indicator of the industry|s level of competitiveness and economic performance. Two types of business dynamics may be distinguished: business dynamics reflecting competition by new-firm entries and business dynamics reflecting competition among incumbent firms. The current paper pays attention to the latter type of business dynamics. A sophisticated indicator for measuring the extent of business dynamics among incumbent firms in an industry is the mobility index. In the current paper we compute mobility indices for 16 industries – covering the whole private sector except for the primary sectors of economy – in The Netherlands over the period 2000-2006, and compare the values of the mobility indices across the sectors.

Keywords: business dynamics; Markov chains; incumbent firms; mobility measurement; Netherlands; Holland; competitiveness; economic performance; competition; new-firm entries; mobility indices; private sector; index values; small and medium-sized enterprises; SMEs; entrepreneurs; entrepreneurship.

DOI: 10.1504/IJESB.2011.038536

International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, 2011 Vol.12 No.2, pp.185 - 206

Published online: 11 Oct 2014 *

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