small business

According to data from the 2002 economic census, the number of black-owned firms grew by 45 percent between 1997 and 2002. Overall, there are 1.2 million black-owned businesses in the U.S., accounting for roughly $88.8 billion in revenues.

The report finds that since the late 1990s, SBA has experienced mixed success in addressing other management challenges that affect its ability to manage the 7(a) loan program. With respect to using information technology to monitor loans made by 7(a) lenders, between 1997 and 2002, SBA was unsuccessful in developing its own system to establish a risk management database as required by law. However, SBA awarded a contract in April 2003 to obtain loan monitoring services.

The report finds that DOE faces two key management challenges to improving its small business program. Addressing these challenges will bring DOE’s small business program more in line with the practices associated with high-performing organizations and with principles contained in the Government Performance and Results Act.

This paper reports upon a research project which was designed to explore the relationship between the record keeping practices of small businesses and their potential exposure to tax and related business compliance problems. Overall, the research showed that there was some dissonance between perceptions and reality. All of the key stakeholders – SME owners/managers, practitioners and ATO auditors – perceived (to varying degrees) direct relationships between poor SME record keeping practices and adverse tax compliance outcomes.

The authors focus on the economies of the North Atlantic Core during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and find that an impressive variety of local financial institutions emerged to supply the needs of SMEs wherever there was sufficient demand for their services.

The aim of this paper is to explore the impact of SME and large project incentive schemes in two cases: in areas where financial assistance has been taken up by SME and large firms, and in areas where only SME are
subsidized. The analysis is based on the two major measures for local development in Italy: incentives by
Law 488/92, mainly devoted to SME, and contratti di programma (program agreements), created for large projects.

The State of the Inner City Economies project seeks to document the impact that small establishments have in the inner city. The goal of this analysis is to present the business potential of inner cities. Inner city businesses are similar to businesses located in the rest of the metropolitan statistical area, exhibiting similar startup and bankruptcy rates.

This research attempts to shed light on how small business fares under the constraint of litigation and calculates annual litigation costs. It finds that the impact of litigation on businesses goes well beyond the purely financial impact of legal fees and damages.

This study examines the cost of the benefits that employers provide to their workers and how these costs vary with company size. It focuses on benefits that employers voluntarily provide: health insurance, private pension plans, paid vacation, and sick leave.

The fourth edition report reviews the economic environment for small businesses in the year 2004, as well as the financial and federal procurement marketplaces.