Do SMEs in deprived areas find it harder to access finance? Evidence from the UK Small Business Survey

Encouraging enterprise in deprived places is an important objective of the UK government policy. Evidence on the perceptions of entrepreneurs suggests that access to finance may be harder for firms in deprived areas, who may have fewer contacts, less collateral or worse access to mainstream banks. Yet there is little empirical evidence on whether this is actually the case. This paper investigates whether firms in deprived areas are more likely to find it hard to access finance than other firms, using a sample of around 3500 UK small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). We find that firms in deprived areas are more likely to perceive access to finance is a problem. However, controlling for SME characteristics, firm growth, credit scores and selection effects, we find no evidence that they actually do find it harder to obtain. The results suggest that geographical disparities in access to finance are unimportant for the average firm.     

Exploring the customer's intention to switch firms: The role of customer‐related antecedents

This study examined the customer‐related antecedents of the customer's intention to switch firms. Customer citizenship behavior was a key element in this study. Scholars have extensively studied the antecedents of customer citizenship behavior. However, the way that customer citizenship behavior relates to other attitudinal variables and the intention to switch has scarcely been analyzed. The proposed hypotheses were verified using partial least squares variance‐based structural equation modeling applied to 947 users of beauty care service firms in five countries. The results suggest that customer citizenship behavior is an antecedent of satisfaction, trust, and attitudinal loyalty. Two of these variables influence customers’ intentions to abandon relationships with the service provider. The implications of these findings enhance managers’ and scholars’ understanding of the determinants of customers’ intentions to switch firms.     

International automotive production networks: how the web comes together

This paper aims to provide empirical evidence for the connections between new trade theory and the spatial distribution of economic activities, considering the results obtained by the literature on New Economic Geography as a starting point. To do this, we apply Social Network Analysis specifically to the World Automotive Trade Network. We explore the structural features of the auto network for the years 1996 and 2009 using data on trade flows for 172 countries. Our findings suggest that the auto network has become denser, more extensive and more integrated over time, depicting a center-periphery structure in which regional clusters play a prominent role. In this configuration, strong agglomeration forces generated by companies’ desire for large and rich market access with minimum transportation costs are balanced by the search for new high-potential markets.     

Identifying micro-destinations and providing statistical information: a pilot study in the Canary Islands

Municipalities and regions are often used as an object of tourism analysis at the subnational level. This occurs because administrative borders are used to implement tourism policies and collect statistical information. However, administrative boundaries may not always be suitable for studying tourism destinations at a local level. Sometimes, particularly in high-density tourism destinations, several differentiated tourism areas occupy a single municipality; tourism areas may, and often do, extend beyond municipal boundaries and tourism destinations may not occupy the whole of the municipal area. As such, a new level of analysis is often required: the micro-destination. There are few tourism concepts as imprecise as that of the destination. Therefore, the process of identifying and establishing the boundaries of a micro-destination is by no means a straightforward one. This paper presents six criteria for establishing the boundaries of this type of tourism area. Of these six, the two primary criteria used are: the concentration of tourism establishments; and tourism typologies and supply characteristics. These criteria have been applied as part of a pilot study in the Canary Islands. Statistical information for nine micro-destinations is generated using the geolocation of tourism establishments together with information obtained from both supply-side and demand-side surveys.     

El desempeño económico financiero y responsabilidad social corporativa Petrobrás versus Repsol

Alterations in the institutional environment, as a result of the markets integration process and the consequent alterations in stakeholders’ conduct are one of the important vectors of changes in companies’ behavior. In that context, in addition to their yields those companies happen to worry about their attitudes in relation to social and environmental factors. Thus, the corporate social responsibility (CSR) is seen as one more strategy to maintain or increase their income and to harness the enterprise development. The main purpose of this study is the verification of the existing relation between Social Responsibility and the economic and financial performance of two companies in the business of Petroleum, Gas and Bio-combustibles. The investigation was based on a comparison of social-environmental practices developed by Petrobras S/A (Brazil) and Repsol S/A (Spain). For the purpose of verification of the relation between social-environmental performance and the economic-financial one, a linear regression analysis was carried out.     

Do online discounts and free gifts damage brand image of service? The moderating role of promotion-proneness

The present paper outlines a study based on an experimental design that investigated the effect of online price discounts and free gifts on consumers’ evaluation of the brand, in the context of an airline. The study also analyzed whether promotion-proneness exercises a moderating effect on this relationship. It was found that discounts generate a more positive brand image than free gifts among promotion-prone users, while for less promotion-prone individuals, the opposite is true. The results will help managers to select the most appropriate online sales promotion type for reaching different consumer groups, depending on their promotion-proneness, in line with the needs and objectives of the service firm.     

Do Neighbours Influence Value‐Added‐Tax Introduction? A Spatial Duration Analysis

The spatial survival models typically impose frailties, which characterize unobserved heterogeneity, to be spatially correlated. However, the spatial effect may not only exist in the unobserved errors, but it can also be present in the baseline hazards and the dependent variables. A new spatial survival model with these three possible spatial correlation structures is explored and used to investigate the implementation of value‐added tax (VAT) in 99 countries over the period 1970–2009. Estimation is performed by a Bayesian approach through the Markov chain Monte Carlo method. The estimation results suggest the presence of a significant spatial correlation among the VAT introductions of neighbouring countries.     

Ramsey pricing including CO2 emission cost: An application to Spanish airports

The long-term growth in the air transport is leading to the need to expand airport infrastructure but this has serious environmental implications. Thus, there is the need to establish an alternative to the traditional airport pricing structure for landing fees, which reflects the overall costs that air transport operators impose on others. Airport pricing should provide a sound guide for future investments, and at the same time reflect whether additional facilities are needed and at what price, by taking into account all costs, including environmental costs. This paper analyses one application of Ramsey Pricing on uncongested Spanish airport, by considering the CO₂ emission costs as a valuable input.     

Promotion tournaments in market equilibrium

This paper studies how promotion tournaments motivate workers to accumulate human capital when wages are constrained by outside labor markets. Patient firms can retain some control over tournament prizes through a relational contract, but if the firms are competitive, full efficiency does not obtain in equilibrium even for discount factors arbitrarily close to one. Full efficiency, however, may be feasible in firms with superior technologies; thus, technological efficiency breeds incentive efficiency. The paper also shows that a wage floor leads to insufficient human capital investment in competitive firms, but could lead to excessive investment in technologically superior firms.     

Modelling user perception of bus transit quality

This article evaluates how bus users perceive the quality of their public transport service. In particular it looks at how perception of quality varies according to the available information. The experiment compares an overall evaluation of service quality before and after making passengers reflect on the importance of certain fundamental system variables which they may not have previously considered.Focus groups were used to individualise the most relevant variables. A quality survey was carried out both on-board buses and at bus stops and the overall service quality was related to the aforementioned variables using ordered probit models. The perception of quality is shown to change with the category of user and that there tends to be more criticism towards variations in overall quality until the users are stimulated into thinking more deeply about other influential variables. The application of this methodology may provide operating companies with valuable information for planning marketing policies aimed at different categories of user, in order to improve the service quality and attract more passengers to using public transport.