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.     

组织变革认知、转业辅导、生涯发展与人力运用关系之研究——以台糖公司为例

为适应多元环境的变化,公营事业转民营已成为一种市场趋势,而变革亦成为公营企业面对民营化情势的一种手段。当组织进行变革时,除应顾及组织业务发展外,亦应提供转业辅导,协助员工重新规划生涯发展方向,以期能有效运用或开发现有人力素质。本研究以台糖公司参加第二专长转业进修班的员工为研究对象,探讨组织变革认知、转业辅导、员工生涯发展与人力运用之间的关系。共回收有效问卷93份,研究结果发现：1．组织变革认知之“改隶成效”对转业辅导之“新知能学习”有显著影响;组织变革认知之“裁撤标准建立”对转业辅导之“训练课程设计”有显著影响。2．转业辅导之“新知能学习”对员工生涯发展之“生涯路径规划”和“生涯信息提供”有显著影响。3．转业辅导之“新知能学习”对人力运用之“人力重置与报偿”有显著影响;转业辅导之“参训动机”对人力运用之“修正绩效评估方案”有显著影响。4．组织变革认知之“裁撤标准建立”对员工生涯发展之“生涯路径规划”与“生涯信息提供”有显著影响。5．组织变革认知之“改隶成效”对人力运用之“人力重置与报偿”有显著影响;组织变革认知之“裁撤标准建立”对人力运用之“修正绩效评估方案”有显著影响。     

Waiting time probabilities in the M/G/1 + M queue

We consider an M/G/1 queueing system where the customers may leave the queue if their services do not commence before an exponentially distributed random time. The (conditional) offered waiting time distribution is approximated by a gamma distribution via matching the first and second moments of the actual waiting time. A simulation study is conducted to assess the accuracy of the approximation and it reveals that the approximation performs satisfactorily under general conditions on service time distributions.     

Exclusivity and Control

We model competition between content distributors (platforms) for content providers, and show that whether or not content is exclusive or “multihomes” depends crucially on whether or not content providers maintain control over their own pricing to consumers: if content providers sell their content outright and relinquish control, they will tend to be exclusive; on the other hand, if content providers maintain control and only “affiliate” with platforms, then multihoming is sustainable in equilibrium. We show that the outcome under affiliation depends on the tradeoff between platform rent extraction (which increases in exclusivity) and content rent extraction (which increases in multihoming), and demonstrate that the propensity for exclusivity can be increasing, decreasing, or even nonmonotonic in content quality. Finally, if a content provider internalizes the effect of its own price on platform demand, we prove that a platform that already has exclusive access to content may prefer to relinquish control over content pricing to the content provider in order to reduce price competition at the platform level.     

The differential effects of public R&D support on firm R&D: Theory and evidence from multi-country data

This paper aims to evaluate the effects of various forms of public research and development (R&D) support on firms’ incentives to invest in R&D. First, in order to identify potential channels through which public R&D support influences firm R&D, a formal model of firm R&D with public R&D support is developed and analyzed. Four potential channels are identified: the technological-competence-enhancing effect, the demand-creating effect, the R&D-cost-reducing effect and the (project) overlap (or duplication) effect. These multiple channels indicate that it is difficult to evaluate the aggregate effect of public R&D support and that there are differential effects of public R&D support on firm R&D, depending on various firm- or industry-specific characteristics. Second, the differential effects of public R&D support are empirically tested using unique firm-level data for nine industries across six countries. Public support tends to have a complementarity effect on private R&D for firms with low technological competence, for firms in industries with high technological opportunities and for firms facing intense market competition. In contrast, firms with high technological competence and firms that have enjoyed fast demand growth in recent years show a crowding-out effect, and firm size and age do not show any discernible differential effect.     

Monday returns and asset pricing

The seasonal patterns observed on Monday stock returns are still unexplained by different asset pricing models. We attempt to fill this gap in the finance literature by using the Fama-French (Journal of Financial Economics 33:3–56, 1993) risk factors to explain the Monday seasonal. The results in the study show that Monday returns are explained by risk factors such as the market return, the size of the firms, and the book-to-market ratios of firms.     

Expectations Formation and Business Cycle Fluctuations: An Empirical Analysis of Actual and Expected Output in UK Manufacturing, 1975–1996

Direct measures of expectations, derived from survey data, are used in a Vector Autoregressive (VAR) model of actual and expected output in eight industries in the UK manufacturing sector. No evidence is found with which to reject rationality in the derived expectations series when measurement error is appropriately taken into account. The VAR analysis illustrates the importance of intersectoral interactions and business confidence in explaining the time profile of industrial outputs, examines the mechanisms by which shocks are propagated across sectors and over time and investigates the relative importance of sectoral and aggregate shocks of different types.