Bigger may be better, but is older wiser? Organizational age and size in the New York life insurance industry

! explore the effects of organizational size and age on failure rates among New York life insurance companies between 1813 and 1985. Theorists tend to agree that organizational growth and aging processes increase organizational inertia, but they disagree on the effect of that inertia on failure rates. I find that organizational size affects failure rates nonmonotonically, brit over the actual range of sizes, large size almost always lowers failure rates. I also find a strong liability of aging; this runs counter to ecological theories of liabilities of newness and adolescence. An empirical test of the relative effects of age during periods of environmental turbulence and calm indicates that organizational inertia is especially problematic during turbulent times. This suggests that the liability of aging occurs more through obsolescence than senescence, at least in the population of insurance companies I investigate.