Small Business and Antitrust

The question addressed in this paper is how small business fits into a post-Chicago antitrust agenda. The answer, we will see, relates not to special privileges for the small, but to a vigorous competition policy directed against manifestations of market power.     

Business Survival and Success of Young Small Business Owners

Little empirical evidence provides insight in person-oriented drivers of business survival and success of small business owners. In this paper I perform a duration analysis of business survival amongst young white (self-employed) small business owners in the U.S. Compulsory exits are distinguished from voluntary exits. This enables an alternative definition of business success: the longer one can survive and prevent inLvoluntary exit, the more successful one is. Potential drivers of survival are derived from recent empirical evidence in related studies. The potential drivers of success are also derived from historical economic thinkers such as Marshall and Schumpeter. The estimated hazard rates are affected by characteristics of the small business owner and business conditions.     

Small Business and Sport Sponsorship

This exploratory study examines 18 small organisations who engaged in the sponsorship of local sport, rugby league teams, in Australia. The literature sponsorship is applied to local activities and small business, thus filling a gap in the literature. The study examined seven main areas: (1) Responsibility for sponsorship arrangement; (2) Firms objectives for choosing sponsorship; (3) Types of other spon- sorship activities; (4) Perceived sponsorship effectiveness; (5) Sponsor- ship and the promotional mix; (6) Sponsorship entitlements; and (7) Demographic questions about the organisation. Similarities and differ- ences to results of earlier literature in this area are discussed. Directions for hture research are also explored.     

Small Business Borrowing and the Bifurcated Economy: Why Quantitative Easing Has Been Ineffective for Small Business

In the early years following the financial collapse, federal officials and others believed that banks were not making loans to creditworthy small firms, who have accounted for most of the job creation in the United States in recent decades. Acting on this belief, a number of programs were created to increase bank lending to small firms. Overall, however, the data collected since the 2007/8 financial crisis suggest that the explanation for slow loan growth in the small business sector is not a result of supply constraints but rather a result of anemic loan demand among small firms. Thus, recent programs intended to increase small business borrowing through easing credit supply were doomed to fail. The weak demand for credit among small firms is representative of the sluggish performance of the small business economy postrecession, a marked contrast to the robust performance of larger firms and a reflection of a bifurcated economy.     

The Advertising of Legal Services to Small Business Executives

ABSTRACT

Providers of professional services have become more interested in advertising their practice as competition has increased in several areas. The author empirically analyzes the elements of professional service print advertisements that would most influence a client's selection and recommendation of a particular firm. The results indicate that displaying a high level of professional qualifications, many specific services targeted toward a particular segment, and a specific consultation fee have a positive impact on customer selection and recommendation decisions.     

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...     

Small Business and Empirical Perspectives in Business Ethics: Editorial

In this editorial to a collection of papers on ethics in small firms, the case is made for greater use of high quality empirical research on business ethics. Sociological perspectives have much to offer to the field of business ethics that continues to be dominated by normative, moral philosophy. The second contribution of the paper is to argue for a re-orientation away from the large multi-national firm as a benchmark subject of business ethics research. One important point of view to be included is that of the small firm, which remains the dominant organisational form throughout all the OECD countries.     

Service Orientation and Small Business Marketing

ABSTRACT

In an environment of ever increasing competition, small businesses are beginning to recognize that adopting a strong service orientation in their marketing efforts not only gives them a differential advantage, but is also fast becoming a prerequisite for their survival. This study introduces a classification scheme which identifies firms by their degrees of involvement in service orientation. This typology was validated in a nationwide survey of retail nurseries. The findings supported the hypotheses that a strong service orientation does have a dramatic impact on a business's marketing decisions. It is hoped that recognition of these distinctions will offer strategic insights for small business practitioners in making marketing and promotion decisions.     

Is the Small Firms Loan Guarantee Scheme Hazardous for Banks or Helpful to Small Business?

Loan guarantee schemes are an integral part of SME policy in both developed and developing countries. Yet little has been done to evaluate such programmes, particularly in terms of their ability to correct for capital market imperfections. This paper uses individual loan data from some 42,000 UK SFLGS backed debt contracts to empirically test the default specification outlined in the seminal credit rationing paper of Stiglitz and Weiss (1981). The results show that default (failure) does increase with the banks cost of capital, but not with the government premium. In addition, default appears to be determined by a whole host of other factors not typically considered in the credit rationing literature.     

Small Business Growth in the Short Run

This paper examines the determinants of short run employment growth in very small firms in the Services sector. The study shows evidence of non linearities in the growth-size relationship, and it is argued that these non linearities reflect the short run constraints that small firms face in adjusting to demand shocks. The paper also suggests that there are other systematic influences on growth apart from size. The paper draws on survey evidence from the Northern Region of the United Kingdom.     

刍议小业主发展的战略选择

在竞争激烈的市场经济中小业主面临着生存和发展壮大的诸多困难。同行内的小业主集聚在一起组成各种专业市场,则可形成集聚效应。专业市场要实行从物业管理型向功能管理型转变,以独特的方式整合场内小业主的经营活动,将市场做大做强,为小业主的经营与发展创造良好的空间。     

Trajectories of Small Business Financial Structure

A dynamic theory of the small firm is expounded, assuming entrepreneurs maximise business value over a finite time horizon. Predicted trajectories for key financial variables are seen to depend on whether debt or equity are cheaper. The predicted trajectories are compared with actual trajectories, using empirical evidence from three years of detailed primary source data on one hundred and fifty new business startups in Scotland. Evidence largely confirms predictions of the model, for the cheap equity case. For this case, as capital and sales rise steadily, debt is retired rapidly, except when interest rates on long-term debt are low. This finding is supported by explicit empirical trajectories of key financial variables.     

The New Industrial Organization and Small Business

The small business sector is an important part of the American economic landscape, in both absolute and relative terms. Despite its absolute growth, however, the sector accounts for a diminishing share of private sector activity. But its importance, and changes in importance, vary across industrial sectors of the economy.Drawing on the theoretical and empirical insights developed in recent books by John Sutton, we suggest that the presence or absence of endogenous strategic behaviors of the larger firms with respect to advertising, promotion, research and development, and other sunk cost expenditures may well play an important role in explaining the differing levels of small business importance, both cross-sectionally and over time. We conclude the paper with suggestions for research directions that could shed further light on these ideas.     

Small Business Failure and External Risk Factors

Unlike much of the previous literature, which has generally focused on internal risk factors, this study seeks to explore the impact of macro-economic factors on small business mortality. The results suggest that economic factors appear to be associated with between 30% and 50% of small business failures, depending on the definition of failure used. As expected, failure rates were positively associated with interest rates (where failure was defined as bankruptcy) and the rate of unemployment (where failure was defined as discontinuance of ownership). However, somewhat unexpectedly, failure rates were found to be positively associated with lagged employment rates (where failure was defined as to prevent further losses) and with current and lagged retail sales (where failure was defined as either: failed to "make a go of it"; discontinuance of ownership; or discontinuance of business). This indicates that a strengthening economy may provide the trigger for an increase in voluntary business exits as individual proprietors seek to maximize the returns available to them on both their financial and human capital.     

The Response of Small Business Owners to Changes in Monetary Policy

The small business sector of the economy accounts for half of private gross domestic product and well over half of private sector employment. Little is known about how these firms and the banks that serve them are affected by changes in monetary policy. Using data from the monthly surveys of the members of the National Federation of Independent Business, the impact of unexpected (between meeting) Federal Reserve announcements on owner expectations and hiring and spending plans are examined. Using interviews filled out during the month, “before” and “after” groups are analyzed to assess the impact of Federal Reserve announcements on firm behavior. Narrowing the analysis period to just days before and after Federal Reserve announcements permits the assessment of owner responses uncontaminated by other events. Changes in owner expectations and spending and hiring plans are shown to be translated into subsequent changes in actual spending and hiring that are often the opposite of what is suggested by conventional economic theory. Firms that do not use debt respond in the same way as those regularly active in credit markets. The results provide additional insight and richness to our understanding of the transmission channels through which monetary policy impacts the real economy.     

Market Orientation in the Chilean Small Business Context

Abstract

Market orientation has been considered a key factor in successful business operations across different markets. To test this assertion, the authors examine the influence of a firm's market orientation on small business performance in the Chilean retail environment. They go on to report empirical information about the characteristics of the market-oriented retailers in Chile. The Kohli, Jaworski, and Kumar (1993) MARKOR scale is used in the study to assess the market orientation in the context of a developing country environment. Data for the study were collected from small retailers in Chile through self-administered questionnaires using a drop-off/pick-up method. The results show a significant correlation between market orientation and small business performance. Path analyses found that the best structure among the Market Orientation dimensions is: Intelligence Generation→ Intelligence Dissemination → Responsiveness. Moreover, these performance measures differed significantly among the three different partitions obtained using a k-means cluster analysis. The findings indicate that the MARKOR scale is both valid and reliable in a diverse Chilean small business environment.