Abstract
Economic growth continues to be one of the most relevant and exciting subareas of economic and managerial decisions. Therefore, the relationship between economic growth and profitability is crucial. However, for business decisions, relevance focuses on the risk-return trade-off, which explains rationality in decision-making. Using a balanced panel data of 418 Agri-food Colombian firms from to 2008-2015 period, we add empirical evidence regarding the effect of the risk-return trade-off to explain the growth path. Firstly, the paper studies the influence of the growth measure for different business sizes. Secondly, the risk-return trade-off, based on the Sharpe ratio explains rational evidence in the growth decisions. The Sharpes ratio is an appropriate measure for ensuring the survival of companies and their long-term competitiveness. This finding also suggests that other contextual variables, such as age, size, or region, can explain the growth path. Finally, the study of growth by sub-period of the economic cycle is broken down to validate the profiles of these companies during periods of economic recession. As future lines of work, there is the study of the relationship between business efficiency or survival and the growth and profitability/risk parameters analyzed.