A small number of high-growth firms (henceforth HGFs) have received an increasing amount of attention in the literature in recent years. This is because they generate the bulk of – or all – new jobs (., Birch and Medoff, 1994; Henrekson and Johansson, 2010; Storey, 1994). The purpose of this paper is to examine whether HGFs defined in different ways are equally important to the growth in different economic outcome variables, if they are the same firms irrespective of definition, and, finally, how firm age and size influence the probability of a firm becoming a HGF depending on definition
