Capital Growth,Financing Source and Profitability of Small Businesses: Evidence from Taiwan Small Enterprises

This paper examines the relationship between profitability and financial capital for 1,276 small firms in Taiwan over the period 1992–1997. The results indicate a statistically positive relationship between profitability and capital growth. When financial capital is further divided into debt and equity, the results indicate a significantly positive relationship between profitability and equity financing, but a significantly negative relationship between profitability and debt financing. Moreover, the profitability of small firms is positively related to both the external economic conditions and the firms previous profitability.     

Modelling Small Business Growth and Profitability

Small Business Economics - This paper develops a simple structural model relating small business performance to firms' market position and the characteristics of their owner-managers. Attention...     

The Role of Small Firms in the Technology Development of China

Science & Technology (S&T) is high on the Chinese policy agenda and the country aims at becoming an innovation‐driven economy. Small firms have been important in technology development in other East Asian countries but the situation in Chinese small firms has been far less explored. We examine how much S&T has been accounted for by small firms and how their S&T intensity differs across industries and ownership groups. We also analyse how various firm characteristics differ over size categories and S&T status. This study is based on newly processed micro‐level data provided by the National Bureau of Statistics with information on a large number of S&T indicators for manufacturing firms in China in 2000 and 2004. Our results suggest that the role of small firms in Chinese S&T is similar to that in many other countries. They account for a comparably small share of total S&T and most small firms are not engaged in any S&T. However, those small firms that do engage in S&T tend to be more S&T intensive and have a higher output in terms of patents than larger Chinese S&T firms.     

The Determinants of Growth for Small and Medium Sized Firms. The Role of the Availability of External Finance

We present an empirical analysis of the determinants of growth for a sample of Italian small and medium sized firms. We show that, when investigating a sample which includes firms between 10 and 50 employees and a set of variables larger than those usually considered in the literature, growth – net of industry characteristics and ex ante market power – turns out to be significantly affected not only by size and age, but also by state subsidies, export capacity and credit rationing. By adopting a multivariate approach we also show that these findings are confirmed after controlling for heteroskedasticity, survivorship bias and serial correlation. Our results suggest that the hypothesis of independence of firm growth from the initial size and other factors (usually referred to as Gibrat's law in the literature) is not rejected for large firms, while it does not hold for small and medium sized firms under financial constraints in a "bank-oriented" financial system in which access to external finance is difficult.     

The Creation and Growth of Small Business Service Firms in Post-Industrial Britain

Since 1980, the United Kingdom has experienced a dramatic growth in firms and employment in information-intensive business services, such as management consultancy and market research. This article reports the results of the first substantial nation-wide investigation into the nature and causes of small professional business service firm growth in Britain, undertaken in 1991. It reveals marked differences in the characteristics, markets and competitive requirements of such firms, compared with small manufacturing firms. The demand for their services comes predominantly from large companies, and is more focussed on financial and other services and government. But small firms are also making increasing use of business services. Specialised expertise, reputation and educational and professional qualifications are essential prerequisites for the establishment of new business service firms. Their success is also being enhanced by increasing use of informal networking, collaborative partnerships, and subcontracting.     

外商直接投资与发展中国家的人力资本发展

人力资本不仅仅影响一国内部经济增长,同时也和外部经济交往比如外商直接投资(FDI)存在互为补充的关系。FDI能够对东道国的人力资本发展起到重要作用,主要通过影响东道国的正规教育和在职培训提升东道国的人力资本水平;发展中国家要加大本国的教育投资;鼓励跨国公司的培训活动和实施吸引人才的制度;实现FDI、人力资本和技术外溢的良性循环。     

资本结构与盈利能力关系的调查统计分析

<正>一、资本结构直接影响企业的行为及价值企业盈利能力是企业财务分析的一项重要内容,决策者可以利用上市公司公开的财务数据进一步开展分析。而企业资本结构是否合理直接影响到公司的经营业绩和长     

人力资本在经济增长中的作用：中国和巴基斯坦的比较研究

本文通过比较分析中国和巴基斯坦的经济增长 ,检验人力资本在各自国家经济增长中的作用。我们的结果是 :GDP与用除小学教育外不同教育水平的在校学生比率代表的人力资本有正相关关系 ,但是 ,当我们用各级学校的在校学生比率与劳动力相乘 ,反映参与GDP生产的劳动力的人力资本存量时 ,中国的GDP与所有各教育水平所表示的人力资本量成正相关关系 ,巴基斯坦小学层次的量则仍与其GDP增长成负相关。从总体上 ,对于两个国家来说 ,后一种测量方法要比用简单的在校学生率要好。     

The Increased Role of Foreign Capital in the Peruvian Financial System

Summary

Foreign investment has played a very important role in developing Peru's banking sector since 1990. Indeed, as of June 1998, half of all bank assets were foreign-controlled. Much of this increased participation by outside entities can be traced to the privatization drive and to discriminatory reserve requirements on domestic deposits. Despite financial deepening, the analysis conducted here finds that the financial sector has not become more efficient in lowering the cost of intermediation as measured by the interest spread between loans and deposits.     

Relationships among Strategic Capabilities and the Performance of Women-Owned Small Ventures

This study of small, life-style ventures owned by women focuses on the strategic, firm-level factors related to business performance. A theoretical model drawing on the resource-based theory is developed and tested empirically. The model includes strategic capabilities, management styles, and their relation to performance. It is tested empirically on a sample of 220 Israeli female business owners. Analysis reveals that life-style venture performance is highly correlated with certain aspects of the business owner's skills as well as the venture&apops;s resources. Paradoxically, the owner/managers in the sample rate their skills and their venture's resources as being weak in precisely those areas that correlate positively with business performance. These findings suggest that performance of life-style ventures owned by women depends more on marketing, financial, and managerial skills than on innovation.     

Asset Substitution and Capital Use by Firms Facing Financial Repression

Firm behavior is examined during a period of financial repression in Brazil. Empirical findings indicate that firms experiencing rising inflation rates: (1) increase their capital stock while reducing liquid asset holdings; (2) experience increases in the productivity of capital (i.e. a rise in the output–capital ratio); (3) increase the scale of the firm’s operations both because of the rising capital productivity and the greater quantity of capital; (4) most firms increase liquid asset holdings as they expand production, although Brazilian firms do so at about twice the rate of multinational firms; (5) do not change overall inventory holdings; however, inventories increase as output rises for multinational firms while for Brazilian firms inventories decrease as output rises; and (6) firms that are more likely to face financial constraints expand their scale of operations at a faster rate as they accumulate more debt.     

How does Financial Distress Affect Small Firms’ Financial Structure?

This paper provides new evidence on the financial structure of small firms by emphasizing the role played by financial distress. We specify a model of debt adjustments that allows us to investigate the specific nature of the adjustment process towards target debt levels in small firms, which is then extended to account for the effect of financial distress on financial structure decisions. Our models were estimated by the Generalized Method of Moments on a data panel of small Portuguese firms during a period of recession, in which a substantial proportion of the companies analyzed faced a financial distress situation. We find that small firms do adjust their debt ratios towards target levels, the speed of adjustment being faster in the shorter term. Our results also indicate that there are major differences in the determinants of long-term and short-term debt, highlighting the role played by debt maturity in explaining a firm’s financial structure. Finally, random behavior is observed in financially distressed firms, who seem to be disoriented when making their financial structure decisions.     

Financial Attitudes in Family Firms: The Moderating Role of Family Commitment

This study investigates how family commitment moderates whether and how financial knowledge, positive experience with debt suppliers, and economic goal orientation affect owner–managers' attitudes toward debt financing in family firms. Using a sample of 280 German family firms, we find significant relationships between both financial knowledge and positive experience with debt suppliers and owner–managers' financial attitudes toward debt. Our findings show that family commitment moderates these relationships such that high family commitment increases the impact of prior experience with debt suppliers, though the effect of economic goal orientation is lowered and reversed. Overall, we contribute to research on financial decision making, capital structure, and social capital in family firms.     

Vertical Coopetition and the Sales Growth of Young and Small Firms

Vertical coopetition describes a situation where a firm has a vertical exchange relationship with a direct competitor. Drawing on resource‐based perspectives and resource dependence theory, we examine specific characteristics of vertical coopetition that affect the sales growth of young and small firms. We propose that the size of the competitor and mutual dependence as well as overdependence among the cooperating rivals affect the growth potential of young and small firms differently. Our research makes a contribution to the literature by disentangling some of the benefits and threats related to vertical coopetition for young and small firms.     

The Role of Small Firms in U.S. Biotechnology Clusters

The biotechnology industry poses a particular challenge to analysis because its origins were poorly understood or even noticed at the time. The purpose of this paper is to examine and make sense of recent developments in the U.S. biotechnology industry. The pioneers and subsequent followers in biotechnology came from other fields. They altered their career trajectories in sciences like genetics and medical research to enter an unknown and undefined field, which only subsequently became labeled as biotechnology. Those regions exhibiting the greatest success in developing biotechnology clusters also possessed the greatest ability to unleash the potential commercialization latent in those scientists. To generate a successful regional cluster, the existence of world class scientific talent is a necessary condition. However, it is not a sufficient condition. The ancillary or complementary factors must also be available to translate this knowledge into a commercialized product. The complementary factors include the presence of venture capital and other forms of finance, the existence of an entrepreneurial culture, and transparent and minimal regulations fostering the start-up and growth processes.     

Financial Analysis of Palestinian Industry Including Small Scale Firms

The study aims to explore the financial aspects of the Palestinian industry, and to investigate productivity and efficiency of small scale industry compared with large scale firms. In order to help policy makers in industrial planning in the new emerged Palestinian state. A special instrument has been used to collect the financial and quantitative data for the related manufacturing firms from a random sample of 215 Palestinian firms. The one way analysis of variance test was used to examine whether the mean scores differ significantly among scale sizes of the Palestinian industry concerning the selected performance measures. In addition, the Scheffe test was used as a post hoc comparison way to identify which scale size firms' performance differs than the other two scale sizes.The research revealed that small scale firms in Palestinian industry have higher labor productivity values than large scale firms, while large scale firms accomplished higher net profit margin compared to small scale industry. Creating an additional job in large scale Palestinian industry needs less cost than creating a job in small scale industry, and large scale firms have better opportunity in getting external financing than small firms.     

金融部门人力资本配置与实体企业金融资产投资

在实体经济“冷”与虚拟经济“热”的大背景下,中国实体企业投资于金融资产的比例快速提升,经济金融化格局正在加速形成。本文试图从金融部门的人力资本配置视角对实体企业金融资产配置的形成逻辑进行诠释。本文以人均受教育年限来衡量金融部门的人力资本配置,采用2008年经济普查微观数据库的数据构造地级市层面的度量指标,并匹配至2009—2018年非金融类上市公司进行实证检验。计量结果显示,金融部门的人力资本水平越高,实体企业金融资产配置越多,且该效应在信息不对称企业中尤为显著。进一步的机制检验发现,在金融部门人力资本提高的条件下,实体企业债务期限显著缩短,具体表现为短期负债增加而长期负债减少。本文研究结论表明,人力资本偏向金融部门增强了其在信贷合约中的市场势力,信贷供给短期化是实体企业金融化的重要原因之一。     

社会资本、人力资本与内生经济增长

通过构建基于社会资本、人力资本的内生经济增长模型,研究社会资本、人力资本与经济增长之间的影响机制,并基于社会信用这种社会资本,运用面板数据对人力资本、社会资本、经济增长之间的影响机制进行实证检验,结果显示:私人生产性的教育消费支出和公共教育支出总体上促进了人力资本的积累,但前者作用大于后者;相对于政府培育社会资本的公共支出,人力资本积累更加有利于促进社会资本的积累;社会资本对中国经济增长产生了积极的影响。但是,上述三个方面的影响存在着较大的地区差异性。     

资源型城市转型中人力资本作用

人力资本是提高资源利用率、实现产业持续发展的源泉,是优化产业结构、延长产业链的关键,是有效减轻环境污染,维护生态安全的保障,人力资本的投资和引进,可优化人力资本配置。在资源型城市转型过程中发挥人力资本作用必须加大人力资本投资,改善人力资本投资和作用的环境,消除人力资本流动障碍,完善人力资本流动机制。