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This paper investigates the influence of intellectual capital (IC) efficiency and its components – human capital efficiency (HCE), structural capital efficiency (SCE) and capital employed efficiency (CEE) – on the growth paths of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and their likelihood of becoming high-growth firms (HGFs).

Drawing on the resource-based view (RBV), our study reveals a positive relationship between IC efficiency and the likelihood of becoming HGFs. Using a longitudinal dataset of 554,076 firm-year observations corresponding to approximately 79,158 European SMEs from 2012–2019, our study employs probit regression to examine the impact of IC efficiency on the probability of becoming an HGF. To investigate the impact of IC efficiency across the growth rate distribution, we conduct further analyses via generalized least squares.

The results show that IC efficiency positively influences the growth paths of small entrepreneurial ventures and their likelihood of experiencing high-growth episodes.

For practitioners, the findings underscore the importance of investing in IC to enhance the growth process of entrepreneurial firms and increase their likelihood of achieving HGF status. Investments in IC can maximize growth potential and competitiveness, informing strategic decision-making.

Policymakers should consider the critical role of IC in promoting SME growth and formulate policies that encourage the development of IC among entrepreneurial firms. Such initiatives can stimulate economic growth, innovation and job creation across European economies.

This study contributes to the literature by focusing on entrepreneurial firms and examining how IC efficiency drives their transition to HGF status. This study provides empirical evidence across several European contexts over an extended period, emphasizing the role of IC efficiency in shaping the growth paths of entrepreneurial firms.

Educational policies are widely recognized as the means par excellence to equalize opportunities among children with different social and family backgrounds and to promote intergenerational mobility. In this chapter, we focus on the French case and we apply the opportunity equalization criterion proposed by Andreoli, Havnes, and Lefranc (2019) for evaluating the effect of rising compulsory schooling requirements in secondary education. Our results show that such education expansion has a limited redistributive effect on students’ earnings distribution. Nonetheless, we provide evidence of opportunity equalization among groups of students defined by family background circumstances.