Gibrat´s law in Brazilian franchising: an empirical note

The paper investigates lognormality in the context of firm size distribution for the Brazilian franchising segment. That implication of Gibrat´s law-GL is considered on a yearly basis under two settings. The evidence, for both the totality of firms and for mature firms at least 5 years old, was obtained in terms of kernel density estimations and by the use of the Shapiro-Wilk normality test. The results indicate the rejection of the lognormality implication of GL and thus suggest the rejection of the law despite the apparently more favorable environment of the franchising segment.