small business

This paper examines the characteristics of a sample of 231 firms that did receive private equity (PE) and compare them to those of a matched sample. The authors show that firms rely on PE funding when there are no alternatives, i.e.when their debt capacity is limited, due to financial and bankruptcy risk and due to important investments in intangibles. PE investors, from their side, select firms with substantial growth options. Further, firms that receive PE have grown more before the funding event than companies that did not receive PE.

The study examines the capacity of Irish SMEs to absorb and use knowledge from outside the firm. The focus is to identify areas which require strengthening ensuring that these firms have such ‘absorptive capacity’ and enable them to play a key role in developing the Irish economy.

The report analyzes the cost of regulations on small and large firms. Results indicate that small firms spend twice as much on tax compliance as their larger counterparts.

In this paper, the authors use a treatment model correcting for potential selection bias to evaluate the performance effect of Business Links assistance on small firms in England.

This paper is a primer on corporate performance, corporate governance, and their interrelationships and measurement systems, with particular focus on Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs). Four theories of corporate governance are explained, along with literature findings on the relationship between corporate governance and corporate performance, with reference to both works on large firms and works on SMEs.

Despite recent innovations that might have reduced banks’ reliance on brick-and-mortar branches for distributing retail financial services, the number of U.S. bank branches has continued to increase steadily over time. This paper assesses the implications of these developments by examining a series of simple branch performance measures and asking how these measures vary, on average, across institutions with different branch network sizes.

Various theories have been advanced for why employees leave incumbent firms to found firms in the same industry, which we call spinoffs. The authors review the accumulating evidence about spinoffs in various high-tech industries, highlighting the central role often played by disagreements.

Overall findings indicate that Between 1985 and 2000, female-owned sole proprietorships grew at a faster rate than those owned by men. Business earnings and activities are different among male and female business owners.

Findings indicate there were an estimated 4.3 million business enterprises in the UK at the start of 2004. This compares with an estimated 4.0 million business enterprises in the UK at the start of 2003.

On the basis of focused interviews with managers of foreign parent banks and their affiliates in Central Europe and the Baltic States, the development of small-business lending by foreign banks is analysed. It is found that the acquisition of local banks by foreign banks has not led to a persistent bias in these banks credit supply towards large multinational corporations. Instead, increased competition and the improvement of subsidiaries lending technologies have led foreign banks to gradually expand into the SME and retail markets.