Scaling invariant distributions of firms’ exit in OECD countries

Self-similar models are largely used to describe the extinction rate of biological species. In this paper we analyse the extinction rate of firms in eight OECD countries. Firms are classified by industrial sectors and sizes. We find that while a power-law distribution with exponent close to 2 fits the extinction rate very well by sector, a Weibull distribution is more appropriate if one analyses the firms’ size.