The population is continuing firms in these time periods. Since we cannot distinguish organic from acquired growth, we study total growth. In order to relate to previous literature, we use employment and sales as growth indicators, yet in addition we introduce productivity and value added. 7 Productivity growth is defined as growth in value-added based labor productivity, which is the single most frequently used productivity statistic (OECD, 2001 p. 12). Labor productivity is a key determinant of living standards and of significant policy relevance, and also a good starting point for productivity analysis, which later can be extended to multifactor productivity.
