small business

Using a panel data set of Small Business Administration (SBA) guaranteed loans, the authors assess whether SBA guaranteed lending has an observable impact on local economic performance. Findings indicate a positive and significant (although economically small) relationship between the relative levels of SBA guaranteed lending in a local market and the future per capita income growth in that market.

The authors propose a more complete conceptual framework for analysis of credit availability for small and medium enterprises. In this framework, lending technologies are the key conduit through which government policies and national financial structures affect credit availability. They emphasize a causal chain from policy to financial structures which affect the feasibility and profitability of different lending technologies.

This paper examines the extent to which marketing assistance administered to a group of high performing Northern Ireland SMEs led to improved export revenue growth. From a methodological standpoint the analysis highlights the potential benefits of using other grant information within the treatment model as a means of uncovering additional important information on firm level characteristics that might otherwise have been missed.

This studys purpose is to recognize and to elaborate on the various factors that influence the accuracy and comparability of data on business start-ups from different countries.

The research is based on the empirical survey conducted among the members of Estonian Association of SMEs. The study involved goal setting, development and implementation of strategies, competitive advantages striven for, orientation toward growth, and factors hindering enterprises’ development.

The study identifies and analyses the factors that influenced the adoption of new technologies in SMEs. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have been used as proxy of new technologies. The findings of the study suggest that industry-specific characteristics such as skill- and export-intensiveness have bearings on the type of ICT adoption.

Banking consolidation has continued to accelerate over the past several years, assisted by technological innovations in information management and statistical modeling, and by the large merger and acquisition (M&A) deals of the late 1990s. This paper provides a review of recent major studies conducted over the past several years.

The Office of Advocacy creates estimates of the number of employer and nonemployer businesses for recent years, since the newest available data have around a two-year lag. Advocacy estimates the number of nonemployers using growth rates from Internal Revenue Service’s sole proprietor count estimates.

Based on an analysis of empirical articles published in the academic literature between 1999 and 2003, the authors examined the current state of the small business and entrepreneurship research in terms of its validity. The aim was to gain insight into the dominant methodological and statistical practices that currently shape the field, shed light on possible gaps, and compare these observations with the findings in the management literature.

This paper aims at understanding the determinants of Italian small- and medium-sized enterprises’ competitiveness. By developing a conceptual model, the authors identify the sources of competitiveness of Italian SMEs. The model is tested using a unique database which collects data, for the year 2004, over a sample of 2,600 SMEs.