Do larger firms have more interfirm relationships?

In this study, we investigate interfirm networks by employing a unique data set containing information on more than 800,000 Japanese firms, about half of all corporate firms currently operating in Japan. First, we find that the number of relationships, measured by the indegree, has a fat-tail distribution, implying that there exist "hub" firms with a large number of relationships. Moreover, the indegree distribution for those hub firms also exhibits a fat tail, suggesting the existence of "super-hub" firms. Second, we find that larger firms tend to have more counterparts, but the relationship between firms' size and the number of their counterparts is not necessarily proportional; firms that already have a large number of counterparts tend to grow without proportionately expanding it. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.