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dissertation in pdf-format - Aalto-yliopisto

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and Rao, 2008). Because of the uneven distribution of IPRs matched pair comparisons were used.<br />

The same amount of non-IPR bus<strong>in</strong>esses was selected with the simple random sampl<strong>in</strong>g method<br />

from the overall group of 320 as counterparts for 28 IPR active companies. The rema<strong>in</strong><strong>in</strong>g 292 non-<br />

selected observations were used <strong>in</strong> cross- validation process to improve the overall validity of the<br />

study. In practise this means that all the firms (n=348) were used <strong>in</strong> the analyses and have an impact<br />

on the results.<br />

The sampl<strong>in</strong>g procedure alleviates the problems of the skewed data distribution s<strong>in</strong>ce micro and<br />

large firms are not <strong>in</strong>cluded <strong>in</strong> the data. As Almus (2002) po<strong>in</strong>ted out, the use of the total corporate<br />

population may emphasize the relative growth <strong>in</strong> micro firms and the absolute growth <strong>in</strong> large firms.<br />

Especially, <strong>in</strong> SME databases this k<strong>in</strong>d of def<strong>in</strong>itional bias could be avoided without the need to use<br />

special <strong>in</strong>dexes such as the Birch <strong>in</strong>dex.

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