A Survival Analysis of Firms in the Textile and Food Industries in Taipei

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the survival time and its relevant factors for firms in the textile and food industries in Taipei. Applying Cox`s accelerated failure time model, and using annual data from 1980 to 1988, we estimate four distributions in a same distribution family: exponential; Weibull; log normal; and generalized gamma. This study finds that the hazard rate of a firm is not affected by the firm`s survival time. In other words, the survival duration of a firm is time independent. At the same time, the amount of capital and the growth rate of capital are positively related with a firm`s survival duration, while the average survival time of firms in the food industry is significantly higher than that of the textile industry. Finally, we find that the generalized gamma distribution fits our data the best.