  In this paper we address the question of the size distribution of firms. To
this aim, we use the Bloomberg database comprising multinational firms within
the years 1995-2003, and analyze the data of the sales and the total assets of
the separate financial statement of the Japanese and the US companies, and make
a comparison of the size distributions between the Japanese companies and the
US companies. We find that (i) the size distribution of the US firms is
approximately log-normal, in agreement with Gibrat's observation (Gibrat 1931),
and in contrast (ii) the size distribution of the Japanese firms is clearly not
log-normal, and the upper tail of the size distribution follows the Pareto law.
It agree with the predictions of the Simon model (Simon 1955). Key words: the
size distribution of firms, the Gibrat's law, and the Pareto law

Physics and Society;General Finance