Firm Survival and Exit Analysis

Firm survival and exit analysis applies hazard and duration models to the question of why some firms survive and others fail, treating the age at which a firm exits the market as a time-to-event outcome. Audretsch and Mahmood's 1995 study of more than twelve thousand U.S. manufacturing establishments showed that a hazard function can relate post-entry survival not only to industry and market-structure conditions but to firm-specific characteristics such as size, innovative activity, and scale economies. Geroski's 1995 survey of entry placed this within the broader dynamics of industries, where high entry rates coexist with high exit rates and most entrants fail young. The method gives strategy researchers a rigorous way to measure the instantaneous risk of failure and to identify which firm and environmental factors push it up or down.