growth paths and survival chances an application of gambler s ruin theory this paper links new firm survival with growth with a focus on the patterns in firms growth paths we theorise a gambler s ruin framework by arguing that new firm performance is best modelled as a random walk process but that survival is nonrandom and depends primarily on the stock of accumulated resources a firm s resources are either there when the business begins or are generated by successful periods wins the empirical section tracks over six years the sales and survival non survival of 6247 uk start ups which all began trading in the same quarter of 2004 we do not find strong evidence in favour of a taxonomy of growth paths because we observe that every possible growth path seems to occur with roughly equal probability however we observe that growth paths influence subsequent survival controlling for lagged size we observe that longer lags of growth and even start up size have significant effects on survival

business experience and start up size buying more lottery tickets next time around this paper explores the determinants of start up size by focusing on a cohort of 6 247 businesses that started trading in 2004 using a unique dataset on customer records at barclays bank quantile regressions show that prior business experience is significantly related with start up size as are a number of other variables such as age education and bank account activity quantile treatment effects qte estimates show similar results with the effect of business experience on log start up size being roughly constant across the quantiles prior personal business experience leads to an increase in expected start up size of about 50 instrumental variable qte estimates are even higher although there are concerns about the validity of the instrument

the role of interest rate taxes in credit markets with divisible projects and asymmetric information this paper assumes that entrepreneurs have divisible projects with random payoffs however managerial skill is unobservable to outsiders projects are assumed to be financed through debt a pooling equilibrium is shown to exist in which good and bad entrepreneurs sell debt at the same price if both types of entrepreneur have a positive probability of bankruptcy project scale will be too large this provides a prima facie case for raising interest rates and hence the cost of capital through taxation if in equilibrium only the poor entrepreneurs go bankrupt there is an outlying possibility that interest rates are too low and a subsidy is called for

corporate taxes and the demand for labor and capital in developing countries this article provides evidence about the impact of corporate taxation on both labor and capital demand by private companies in a developing economy using firm level data from chile our results show that higher corporate tax rates reduce not only the demand for capital but also the demand for labor due to complementarities between both inputs an interesting element of the results presented in this article is the asymmetry between the effects of taxation according to company size the impact on labor demand is significantly higher in large corporations than in small enterprises while the demand for capital is more responsive to corporate tax changes in small firms we can explain these results based on differences in credit constraints according to firm size

consumer skepticism of advertising claims testing hypotheses from economics of information propositions regarding consumers differential skepticism for search experience and credence claims are tested in an experiment using adult consumers the results provide clear support for nelson s 1970 hypotheses that consumers are more skeptical of experience than search attribute claims and more skeptical of subjective than of objective claims no support is found however for the darby and kami 1973 hypothesis that consumers will be more skeptical of credence than of experience attribute claims or for the hypothesis that consumers will not be less skeptical of experience claims for low priced goods

exploring alternative strategic management paradigms in high growth ethnic and non ethnic family firms the primary research question examined in this paper is whether ethnic and non ethnic family firms in the united kingdom differ in their strategy making the paper uses the typology of strategic decision making produced by whittington 1993 what is strategy and does it matter new york routledge to derive contrasting predictions of strategy making by ethnic versus non ethnic firms drawing on a questionnaire study of 76 high growth family firms and subsequent in depth fieldwork with 40 of these the findings show that the ethnic origin of the controlling family has a significant influence in determining the dominance of a particular strategy paradigm however successful high growth family firms are not associated with any particular school of strategy the influence of family bonding on strategy making was greater in ethnic family firms than non ethnic family firms the advent of the second generation of south asians in family firms and closer integration of immigrant and host communities has not altered these apparent differences the findings challenge researchers on family firms to adopt a multiple perspective approach to strategy making

the higher cost of follow up loans this paper uses unique data and looks at the interest margin for follow up finance vis a vis first round finance applying data for asset values we examine the substitution between collateral and interest margins consistent with the theories of bester 1985 besanko and thakor 1987 and the empirical evidence of cressy 1996b we find that a trade off between collateral and interest margins exists our main result indicates that follow up finance is more expensive for loans but not for overdrafts we suggest that a relatively fixed asset base land and buildings as seen in higher security to loan values raises the price and risk of successive financial increments this explains the higher relative cost of follow up finance to borrowers

business borrowing and control a theory of entrepreneurial types a formal model of the bank borrowing decision by the small firm is provided to explain why some entrepreneurs borrow and others do not and why some businesses grow and others remain stationary over long periods loan capital is productive and increases the firm s revenue but brings the business under the control of the bank profits generated by borrowing are a good increasing owner utility whereas control is a bad reducing it the consequent tradeoff between borrowing and control implies that the business optimum will involve borrowing less than the amount that maximises profits if owner control aversion is strong enough equilibrium may involve a corner solution with the business being entirely self funding the above result holds under conditions of symmetric information and zero credit rationing dynamic analysis distinguishes one group of entrepreneurs movers whose preferences towards control evolve through time and their control aversion diminishes from another group stayers whose preferences remain stationary for the movers borrowing increases over time up to a profit maximising optimum whereas for the stayers independence of control is maintained but at the expense of non growth

outside enterpreneurial capital this article investigates factors that affect rejection rates in applications for outside finance among different types of investors banks venture capital funds leasing firms factoring firms trade customers and suppliers partners and working shareholders private individuals and other sources taking into account the non randomness in a firm s decision to seek outside finance the data support the traditional pecking order theory further the data indicate that firms seeking capital are typically able to secure their requisite financing from at least one of the different available sources however external finance is often not available in the form that a firm would like this article engages with four interrelated empirical questions first what are the characteristics of privately held entrepreneurial firms that seek external outside finance and what drives the request for capital from the different potential sources of external finance banks venture capitalists private individuals leasing factoring suppliers customers partners working shareholders among other sources second what are the factors that lead to rejection or acceptance of requests for external finance given this non randomness in the types of firms that seek external finance in the spirit of heckman 1976 1979 third as various forms of financing are far from being perfect substitutes are there differences in the ability of firms to obtain capital from the different available sources fourth can firms obtain all of their desired capital from the different available sources even if it is not in the form they would like it is widely recognised that the decision to seek external finance and the type of financing sought is related to information asymmetries faced by investors regarding the entrepreneurial firm s quality see for example jensen and meckling 1976 1 where

cultural influences on managerial choice an empirical study of employee benefit plans in the united states the objective of this study is to determine the effect of culture on the provision of employee benefits cultural influences have been investigated from a variety of perspectives but not in the context of pension and welfare benefits using unique data this study analyzes the level of coverage of employee benefits in the united states results indicate that culture does have an effect on the provision of these benefits

a direct test of the lemons model the market for used pickup trucks of the implications of models of markets with asymmetric information in the seminal paper on markets with asymmetric information george akerlof 1970 pointed out two possible outcomes that may occur where sellers have better information about the quality of products than do buyers one possibility is that bad products will drive out good products if buyers cannot distinguish quality until after the purchase has been made there will be no incentive for sellers to provide good quality products and the average quality in the market will decline in the case of cars an often cited example of this phenomenon owners who discover that they have a lemon will attempt to sell it in the used car market to an unsuspecting buyer the owner of a creampuff will not sell his car since it is indistinguishable from a lemon to buyers and must therefore sell for the price of a car of average quality the effect of quality uncertainty is to reduce the volume of transactions in the used car market below the socially optimal level a second possibility suggested by akerlof is that institutions may develop to counteract the effects of quality uncertainty warranties and brand names can be used to give the buyer some assurance of quality these institutions may prevent good products from being driven from the market but they will

an experimental investigation into cross national mail survey response rates this study investigates the effects of foreign and domestic source manipulations on cross national response rates of business people in two countries the united states and britain the hypothesis that managers from the u s a are more likely to respond than those from britain is also tested results suggest that foreign source effects do not raise response rates for british managers findings suggest that higher compliance results from the domestic source responses from usa managers were no higher than from their british counterparts the implications of these findings for cross national mail surveys are discussed

do firms get the financing they want measuring credit rationing experienced by small businesses in the u s this paper measures the extent to which small businesses in the united states in the late 1980s were able to access the external credit finance they desired we argue that a comprehensive definition of credit rationing must account for both a creditworthy firms that apply for and are denied financing and b creditworthy firms that decide not to apply for desired external financing given expectations about how long it may take to obtain financing and the evolution of investment opportunities

are small innovators credit rationed drawing upon a sample of 256 small firms who applied for bank loans the current paper is concerned with the extent to which innovativeness is associated with a lower level of loan application success the paper records the proportion of loan successfully applied for and estimates a series of tobit models utilising a number of proxy measures for innovation in terms of inputs outputs and commercial significance to the firm and incorporating standard controls in general the models suggest as anticipated that the most innovative firms are less successful in loan markets than their less innovative peers though there is some variation by proxy moreover there is tentative evidence that a little innovation may be a good thing

new ventures and their credit terms using uk bank data for 466 new venture loan applications we explore the determinants of interest margin the sanctioning decision and the amount borrowed when these factors are considered simultaneously collateral levels greatly influence the size of credits to new ventures a finding consistent with existing work on firm foundation rates and assets black et al economic journal 106 60 75 1996 de meza and webb the economic journal 109 153 163 1999 evans and jovanovic journal of political economy 97 4 808 827 1989 holtz eakin et al 1994 consistent with the rand journal of economics 25 334 347 diversionary models of debt firms with larger credits enjoy discounted interest margins even when we have controlled for firm size

university spin out companies and venture capital abstract the creation of university spin out companies that create wealth is a major policy objective of governments and universities finance is a catalyst of this wealth creation yet access to venture capital is a major impediment faced by these companies in this article we adopt a finance pecking order perspective to examine the problems faced by those university spin out companies seeking to access venture capital we triangulate evidence from spin out companies university technology transfer offices and venture capital firms in the uk and continental europe to identify the problems and to suggest policy developments for these parties as well as government we compare perceptions of high tech venture capital firms that invest in spin outs with those that do not and also consider vcs views on spin outs versus other high tech firms our evidence identifies a mismatch between the demand and supply side of the market in line with the pecking order theory venture capitalists prefer to invest after the seed stage however in contrast to the pecking order theory ttos see venture capital as more important than internal funds early on we develop policy implications for universities technology transfer offices academic entrepreneurs venture capital firms and government and suggest areas for further research

the demand and supply of external finance for innovative firms access to finance has figured prominently in the debate on barriers to firm growth even though existing empirical research has not found conclusive evidence of a finance gap moreover it is not clear to what extent innovation aggravates financial constraints and what role innovation inputs processes and outputs play in the market for external capital in this article we analyze how firm level innovation affects i the likelihood of seeking external finance and ii the likelihood of obtaining it we analyze an original data set of 3095 uk and us firms small and medium size enterprises and middle market containing information on firms innovation behaviors performance and finances for the period 2002 2004 controlling for firm specific characteristics we provide novel and extensive evidence on the links between innovation in its input process and output dimensions and the demand for external capital and its supply

internet start ups access to the bank loan market evidence from italy the analysis of the bank sector s ability to efficiently fuel the birth of new italian business ventures in internet related services is studied in particular through the specification and the estimate of a series of econometric models this paper aims at investigating which characteristics of a large sample of internet start ups and their relative founders facilitate access to the loan market more precisely the role played by founders human capital as a possible significant signal used by banks to evaluate investment projects is addressed estimation results suggest that highly qualified human resources possessed by internet founders do not represent an important driver for gaining access to bank credit and they do not affect the amount of the incurred debt

the value of human and social capital investments for the business performance of startups we investigate the manifold posed question to what extent does investment in human and social capital besides the effect of talent enhance entrepreneurial performance we distinguish between three different performance measures survival profits and generated employment on the basis of the empirical analysis of a rich dutch longitudinal data set of firm founders we conclude that specific investments indeed affect the three performance measures substantially and significantly specific attention is paid to the unobserved talent bias moreover the effect of the emergence of so called knowledge industries is explored

the evans and jovanovic equivalence theorem and credit rationing another look in their well known paper on liquidity constraints evans and jovanovic 1989 argue that under certain assumptions an equivalence relation exists between the probability of switching from wage into self employment and assets of the entrepreneur that is if and only if there are liquidity constraints is the probability of switching a function of the individual s assets the present paper amends this proposition by showing in a simple diagram that if the probability of switching depends on assets then capital constraints are implied in their model but not vice versa this apparently trivial correction is shown to have important implications for empirical work under some circumstances alternative tests need to be employed to establish the existence or otherwise of credit rationing one such test is discussed

start up capital does gender matter female and male entrepreneurs differ in the way they finance their businesses this difference can be attributed to the type of business and the type of management and experience of the entrepreneur indirect effect female start ups may also experience specific barriers when trying to acquire start up capital these may be based upon discriminatory effects direct effect whether gender has an impact on size and composition of start up capital and in what way is the subject of the present paper the indirect effect is represented by the way women differ from men in terms of type of business and management and experience the direct effect cannot be attributed to these differences and is called the gender effect we use of a panel of 2000 dutch starting entrepreneurs of whom approximately 500 are female to test for these direct and indirect effects the panel refers to the year 1994 we find that female entrepreneurs have a smaller amount of start up capital but that they do not differ significantly with respect to the type of capital on average the proportion of equity and debt capital bank loans in the businesses of female entrepreneurs is the same as in those of their male counterparts

business starters and credit rationing this paper investigates which business starters experience credit rationing by simultaneously analyzing which business founders apply for credit and which are refused we argue that credit denial depends largely on the entrepreneurs commitment and signals regarding the repayment of the loan and the success chances of the proposed business our empirical analysis is based on a sample of 1140 potential business starters in the dutch county south limburg our findings show that commitments drive the credit application and approval while the effects of signals are mixed the findings also suggest that business founders have a pretty good idea regarding whether their applications will be honored or not

financing the emerging firm this study explores the financing choices of 1 214 nascent entrepreneurs in the psed ii dataset funding sources are divided into two broad categories personal and external we develop a set of hypotheses about the kinds of firm and nascent entrepreneur characteristics that would likely influence which categories of financial resources are used and the amounts acquired the majority of financing 57 of all financing for emerging ventures comes from the personal contributions of its founders who contributed a median amount of 5 500 per respondent firms that more likely to acquire external funding were projected to have higher levels of revenue were incorporated and were legally registered nascent entrepreneurs with higher levels of education and net worth were significantly more likely to acquire external funding results from analyses are presented and discussed implications of our findings are provided and suggestions for future research are offered

management control systems for j i t an empirical comparison of japan and the u s just in time manufacturing j i t an essential component of the japanese manufacturing model is increasingly emulated by western corporations while j i t has received considerable conceptual and empirical attention suitable management control systems which are essential to successful implementation have been sorely neglected this study provides large scale empirical evidence comparing management control systems as they relate to j i t in the u s and japan

the effect of credit on spending decisions the role of the credit limit and credibility the objective of the present research is to study consumer decisions to utilize a line of credit the life cycle hypothesis from economics argues that consumers should intertemporally reallocate their incomes over their life stream to maximize lifetime utility one form of intertemporal allocation is to use past income in the form of savings in the future a second form is the use of future income in the present this can only be done if consumers have access to a temporary pool of money that they can draw from and replenish in the future a function performed by consumer credit however our research reinforces prior findings that consumers are unable to correctly value their future incomes and that they lack the cognitive capability to solve the intertemporal optimization problem required by the life cycle hypothesis instead we argue that consumers use information such as the credit limit as a signal of their future earnings potential specifically if consumers have access to large amounts of credit they are likely to infer that their lifetime income will be high and hence their willingness to use credit and their spending will also be high conversely consumers who are granted lower amounts of credit are likely to infer that their lifetime income will be low and hence their spending will be lower however based on research in the area of consumer skepticism and inference making we also argue for a moderating role of the credibility associated with the credit limit specifically we argue that the above effect of credit availability would be particularly strong for consumers who believe that the credit limit credibly signals their future earnings potential i e a naive consumer who has limited experience with consumer credit however as consumers gain experience with credit they start discounting credit availability as a predictor of their future and start questioning the validity of the process used to set the credit limit hence with experience the effect of credit limit on the willingness to use credit should be attenuated we test these predictions in five separate studies in the first experimental study we manipulate credit limit and credibility and pose subjects with a hypothetical purchase opportunity consistent with our prediction credit limit impacted the propensity to spend but only when the credibility was high in the second experimental study we replicate these findings even when subjects were given information about their expected future salaries and also show that the credit limit influences their expectation of future earnings potential in the third study we show that the mere availability and increase of current liquidity cannot explain our findings in the fourth study we conduct a survey of consumers in which we measure a number of demographic characteristics and also ask them for their propensity to spend in a given purchase situation in the fifth study we use the survey of consumer finances scf dataset a triennial survey of u s families that is designed to provide detailed information on the use of financial services spending behaviors and selected demographic characteristics results from both studies 4 and 5 provide further support for our proposed framework credit limits influence spending to a greater extent for consumers with lower credibility younger consumers and less educated consumers across all studies we achieved triangulation by using a variety of approaches surveys and experiments subjects types young students and older consumers nature of predictor variables manipulated and measured dependent measures purchase likelihood credit card balance new charges and methods of analysis anova and regression and consistently found that increasing credit limits on a credit card increases spending especially when the credibility of the limit is high this paper joins a growing body of literature in marketing and behavioral decision theory that goes beyond the traditional domains of inquiry e g product choice effects of marketing mix variables and focuses on consumer decisions relating to the appropriate use of income to finance consumption our framework differs from prior research on the effect of payment mechanisms on spending in two significant ways first we are interested in the effects of the availability of credit on spending and not necessarily in the effect of the transaction format that is associated with each payment mechanism second while prior research has studied the point of purchase and historic i e prepurchase effects of credit the present research is concerned with the availability of credit in the future specifically our framework is invariant to the current and prior usage of credit by the consumer

an examination of the factors associated with bank switching in the u k small firm sector previous research has consistently shown that a large number of firms are sufficiently dissatisfied with their bank relationship to have considered switching to an alternative bank in practice however the number of firms which actually switch banks is relatively low this paper examines empirical evidence from a postal survey of small firms in order to investigate this paradox binomial and multinomial logistic regression is used to identify the characteristics which discriminate between a group of firms considering switching banks and two other groups namely those which had switched banks in the previous three years and those which had not switched banks and were not considering doing so the paper tests the hypothesis that some small firms may be informationally captured in that they are tied into their current bank relationship due to difficulties in conveying accurate information about their performance the results provide some evidence in support of the hypothesis in that rapidly changing information particularly changing technology was a characteristic associated with firms which were considering switching but had not switched however there was no significant evidence to support the hypothesis that superior performing firms are more likely to be informationally captured growth and perceived business success were both associated with firms which switched banks there was strong evidence that the main drivers of the decision to switch or consider switching banks were difficulties obtaining finance and dissatisfaction with the service provided the results also showed that firms which were considering switching banks tended to use more alternative non banking sources of finance it is concluded that some firms will resolve difficulties obtaining finance by switching banks whereas others will use alternative sources of finance depending on the balance between the benefits of switching such as increased finance and switching costs including information provision

why do most firms die young a model is developed to explain why most firms die in the first few years of trading a risk averse entrepreneur with initial capital endowment faces a brownian motion in net worth over time to balance return profits growth and risk variance of profits she adopts a portfolio strategy choosing market positioning to achieve an optimal combination of risk and return at each instant given her financial and human capital endowments and attitude towards risk failure occurs when the firm s value falls below the opportunity cost of staying in business the resulting distribution of failure is inverse gaussian implying for specific parameter values a positively skewed failure curve of the type observed in practice in addition the model presents a novel measure of management human capital mhc which implies that high mhc entrepreneurs will have higher absolute and marginal profits growth than low mhc entrepreneurs at given levels of risk

cultural and ethical effects in budgeting systems a comparison of u s and chinese managers this study developed and tested a model of culture s effect on budgeting systems and hypothesized that system variables and reactions to them are influenced by culture specific work related and ethical values most organizational and behavioral views of budgeting fail to acknowledge the ethical components of the problem and have largely ignored the role of culture in shaping organizational and individual values cross cultural differences in reactions to system design variables and in the behaviors motivated or mitigated by those variables has implications for the design and effectiveness of budgeting systems the data largely support our research model demonstrating the hypothesized national cultural differences in system design variables e g participation standards tightness budget emphasis etc which we characterized as the opportunity and incentives to create budgetary slack and the expected relationship between incentives but not opportunity to create slack and slack creation behavior the data demonstrate hypothesized cultural differences in ethical ideology but show ethical ideology related to slack creation behavior only for u s managers a discussion of the results and their implications is included

the predicted earnings differential and immigrant self employment in sweden this paper investigates the influence of the predicted earnings differential between self employment and wage employment on self employment propensities among immigrants in sweden immigrants from non european countries have essentially lower earnings from self employment and wage employment than immigrants from european countries it is found that the difference between an immigrant s predicted earnings in self and wage employment has a strong influence on an immigrant s self employment decision a one unit increase in the log differential between self employment and wage employment earnings increase the self employment rate among immigrants by about 5 percentage points suggesting that discriminatory wages in the wage employment sector may push immigrants towards self employment

saving to overcome borrowing constraints implications for small business entry and exit this paper shows how a dynamic analysis of entrepreneurial choice in which inter temporal savings plans can be adjusted to build up capital allows agents to overcome borrowing constraints this casts fresh doubt on the notion that borrowing constraints deter entrepreneurial entry in the long run impatient agents are shown to voluntarily remain constrained indefinitely whereas patient agents become entrepreneurs the model also explains temporary and permanent closures of viable businesses the model s predictions are consistent with evidence of greater savings behaviour by entrepreneurs

an empirical study on contractual heterogeneity within the firm the vertical integration franchise contracts mix this paper tests a discrete choice model on the mix of franchised and company owned outlets contractual heterogeneity within the firm this is often explained by the existing literature as due to heterogeneous characteristics of the outlets however correspondence between outlets and contracts characteristics is not often observed in reality an explanation is proposed which suggests that contract mixing is driven by the contractual choice of both principal and agents and that heterogeneous agents will choose contracts that match their characteristics this hypothesis is supported by econometric results based on outlet level microdata collected by means of a survey of uk firms

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

determinants of south asian entrepreneurial growth in britain a multivariate analysis this paper aims to contribute to our understanding of the factors influencing south asian entrepreneurial growth in britain it develops a multivariate model along the lines of small business economics but includes cultural and social variables the theoretical model specified assumes that cultural factors have an augmenting effect on socio economic factors a distinction is also drawn between initial entrepreneurial characteristics and later expansion strategies used the empirical model based on the general to specific approach can explain almost 60 per cent of entrepreneurial growth the results suggest that moving away from a style of management based on immigrant culture has a positive impact on growth this requires greater delegation of responsibilities to non family employees at the same time strengthening links with the country of origin has a positive impact on growth while the commitment to work hard at start up is essential human capital factors like the entrepreneur s educational attainment and employee training appear to be more crucial than financial resources in contributing to growth

evaluation of credit guarantee policy using propensity score matching in this article we evaluate the effect of the credit guarantee policy by comparing a large sample of guaranteed firms and matched non guaranteed firms from 2000 to 2003 the sample firms are compared with respect to growth rates of different performance indicators including productivity sales employment investment r d wage level and the survival of firms in the post crisis period in order to avoid the selectivity problem propensity score matching methodologies are adopted results suggest that credit guarantees influenced significantly firms ability to maintain their size and increase their survival rate but not to increase their r d and investment and hence their growth in productivity moreover due to the adverse selection problem firms with lower productivity were receiving guarantees

an experimental examination of the economics of information this article presents an experimental test of propositions that come from stigler s classic economics of information theory it reviews previous empirical evidence for the propositions and discusses the mixed support provided for the theory it also discusses a major assumption of the theory and presents hypotheses that suggest that the propositions are not as universal as has been thought the results indicate that buyers with more certain beliefs about retailer price images search less and are less responsive to changes in the costs and benefits of search than buyers with less certain beliefs finally the article discusses the implications of the results for both economics and marketing

entrepreneurial women and men two different species the ability of the self employed to create additional job opportunities is a fundamental concern given the huge increases in public resources targeted at new venture creation in the u k and other countries since 1979 this study initially concentrates on identifying differences in the personal and demographic characteristics of women and men in four potential labour market states namely unemployment waged employment single self employment and job creating self employment it then goes on to consider labour market transitions over a four year period between 1991 and 1995 the key findings are firstly that women entrepreneurs are better educated than their male counterparts and secondly that flows into self employment were considerably higher for men than women furthermore proportionately three times as many male self employed in 1991 had gone on to become job creating self employed by 1995

on the determinants of credit rationing firm level evidence from transition countries abstract using survey data for firms from eastern european transition economies we investigate the determinants of credit rationing our rationing definition incorporates firms whose loan application was rejected but also discouraged potential borrowers we employ a bivariate probit with censoring approach that accounts for the underlying selectivity since rationed firms are a subset of those without a loan we include firm specific attributes related to the alleviation of informational asymmetries and therefore expected to affect credit rationing we find that credit rationing depends on firm size profitability sales growth ownership type legal status sectoral heterogeneity and the country specific level of domestic credit

the latent demand for bank debt characterizing discouraged borrowers concerns that small firms encounter credit constraints are well entrenched in the literature despite widespread empirical evidence that a relatively small proportion of small firms have their loan applications rejected however many firms may be discouraged from applying for fear of rejection these businesses are the focus of this paper based on responses to a large scale postal survey of uk small and medium sized enterprises smes we find that twice as many businesses were discouraged from applying for a bank loan than had their loan request denied more particularly we observe a number of distinguishing characteristics of discouraged borrowers relative to applicants these include strategy sector prior entrepreneurial experience and banking relationships the implications of our findings for policy and future research are briefly discussed

self employment wealth and job creation the roles of gender non pecuniary motivation and entrepreneurial ability this paper uses national child development study data for a large cohort of british individuals to explore the influence of education inheritance and other background characteristics on the propensity to become self employed and also on subsequent success as measured by job and wealth creation for the first time we study the effects of our regressor variables on our success measures via disaggregation of our sample by gender and in this way reveal striking differences between the determinants of male and female entrepreneurial performance

sweet lemons illusory quality self deceivers advertising and price the author s study suggests that competition can lead to low quality advertisers competing against and gaining market shares from lower priced high quality non advertisers evidence in support of

the influence of culture on budget control practices in the usa and japan an empirical study this article reports the results of a study that hypothesized the influence of culture on six aspects of budget control practices in the united states and japan data were collected through questionnaires from 70 manufacturing companies in the united states and 149 such companies in japan results of data analyses indicate that the individualism collectivism dimension would seem to explain why the u s companies compared to the japanese companies tend to use communication and coordination more extensively build budget slack to a greater extent and use long term performance evaluations to a lesser extent the implications of the results for further research and practice are discussed

risk adverse selection and capital market failure this paper investigates the implications of adverse selection for capital market equilibrium when borrowers are risk averse k j arrow and r c lind 1970 argue that when capital markets fail to spread risk properly interest rates are too high the market adds a risk premium that the social planner would not this paper shows that when projects differ in quality in a pooling equilibrium the private market sets interest rates too low even accounting for the risk premium hence there is overinvestment the result is shown to be robust to the introduction of moral hazard copyright 1990 by royal economic society

r d investment of start up firms does founders human capital matter this article examines whether founders human capital affects not only actual investment but also required investment in research and development r d using the original data of japanese start up firms the estimation results indicate that higher levels of founders human capital especially their education levels increase both actual and required investment in r d and thus do not necessarily contribute to reducing the funding gap for r d

an exploration of entrepreneurial activity among asian small businesses in britain this paper investigates various aspects of asian entrepreneurship based on a survey of small indian pakistani and bangladeshi businesses in britain it analyses the motives for business entry the choice of initial business the factors that influence business success and the validity of treating asian businesses as a homogeneous group it cannot support the hypothesis that asians were pushed into self employment in order to avoid unemployment the nature of entrepreneurial entry predominantly through small retail businesses depends largely on the access to informal rather than formal sources of capital and information or advice as well as on the entrant s previous experience business success appears to be closely related both to the share of personal capital invested at start up and to the entrepreneur s educational qualifications the evidence suggests that the motives for business entry differ among the three asian communities studied although that does not seem to have a lasting effect on their business success the predisposition of many well educated asian migrants towards establishing businesses with their own capital in an unfamiliar environment illustrates their entrepreneurial spirit the paper points to the potential role of banks and government agencies in encouraging the creation of many more such small businesses in britain

the relationship between u k banks and their small business customers much emphasis is placed upon the benefits to both parties of a good relationship between banks and their small business customers having explained the significance of smes in the u k economy the papers goes on to consider briefly some of the arguments which underpin the rationale for these relationships the roles of information and communication are discussed and the poor co ordination between banks smes and their accountants is highlighted evidence from over 6 000 small businesses in response to the forum of private business survey in 1994 is then presented this demonstrates the strong positive association between more participative relationships and more positive perceptions of their banks by firms finally it is suggested that a virtuous circle of information and communication could be established if the parties cooperate in a systematic process of risk assessment

are business startups debt rationed using a large random sample of u k start ups and a rich data set the paper demonstrates that human capital is the true determinant of survival and that the correlation between financial capital and survival is spurious provision of finance is demand driven with banks supplying funds elastically and business requests governing take up firms self select for funds on the basis of the human capital endowments of the proprietors with better businesses more likely to borrow a reason why others have seemingly identified start up debt gaps may be the failure to test a sufficiently rich empirical model copyright 1996 by royal economic society

bank loan terms and conditions for eurozone smes the evolution of bank loan price and non price terms and conditions t cs for the 2009 2011 period are investigated using firm level survey data for a sample of eurozone small and medium sized enterprises the raw firm responses which are of a discrete nature denoting tightening or easing of the t cs or no change at all are modeled by a bivariate ordered probit model according to the results obtained there are sizeable differences between countries with the protagonists of the sovereign debt crisis greece ireland portugal spain exhibiting predicted probabilities of tightening that are considerably above the eurozone average in addition price t cs exhibit a substantial tightening over time finally firms net interest expenses and profitability emerge as important determinants in explaining the cross sectional variation in bank loan t cs that they face

microfinance subsidies and local externalities we analyse equilibrium borrowers effort and the cost of microcredit loans in the presence of moral hazard project correlation and subsidies under group lending conditions our results show that under the assumption of endogenous effort project correlation has significant effects on borrowers effort only when it is determined by asymmetric positive or negative shocks these findings indicate that the well known negative effect of within group symmetric project correlation on group lending with joint liability disappears once endogenous effort is taken into account we also analyse the effects of subsidised lending and asymmetric correlation on the relative convenience in terms of borrowers effort of the alternative 1 between group lending and individual lending with notional collateral and 2 among three different market structures of the microfinance industry

racial and gender discrimination in the micro firms credit market evidence from trinidad and tobago this paper examines the market for loans from banks to micro and small enterprises in trinidad and tobago it tests for the presence of racial and gender discrimination it takes the reported refusal to grant loans to groups when all other indicators of credit worthiness are taken into account as evidence of discrimination the paper distinguishes between application and denial rates it finds that once all other indicators of credit worthiness are taken into account neither application nor denial rates differ significantly by gender reported denial rates are however higher for africans compared with other ethnic groups implying the possible presence of discrimination

credit rationing or entrepreneurial risk aversion an alternative explanation for the evans and jovanovic finding abstract evans and jovanovic ej evans d jovanovic b 1989 an estimated model of entrepreneurial choice under liquidity constraints journal of political economy 97 4 808 827 claimed that in a credit market with collateral based lending credit rationing occurs if more collateral increases startups adjusting the model to incorporate uncertainty and decreasing absolute risk aversion this relationship can be explained as a risk averter s response to the lowered riskiness of self over wage employment

financing technology based small firms in europe what do we know this paper reviews the evidence on financing technology based small firms tbsfs in europe european tbsfs finance new investments by relying primarily on internal funds due to capital market failures induced by asymmetric information european venture capital has caught up with us venture capital but this is mainly because of the growth in uk venture investments it is unclear whether european venture capital has been able to certify the quality and enhance the growth of funded companies compared with the nasdaq there is little development of trading in high tech stocks in europe the so called new markets established in the 1990s collapsed in the wake of the internet bubble crash public venture capital and research and development r d tax incentives seem to have positively affected high tech firms

the financial conditions for swedish smes survey and research agenda this paper shows that in two important sectors of swedish industry in the early 1990s the existence of finance demand internally generated constraints in addition to the familiar finance supply externally generated constraints on businesses are a significant empirical phenomenon firms are aware that relinquishing some control would improve performance however the returns in growth profits and survival are not sufficient to offset the utility of control loss owners of younger firms especially in business services regard very favourably the added expertise of new preferably angel equity holders with one in three such firms having actively sought new owners equity finance is therefore to be regarded as a package from the viewpoint of the smaller firm with transfer of management skills from venture capitalist to firm sweetening the bitter pill of control loss

some evidence on the empirical significance of credit rationing this paper examines the credit rationing debate using detailed contract information on over one million commercial bank loans from 1977 to 1988 while commercial loan rates are sticky consistent with rationing this stickiness varies with loan contract terms in ways that are not predicted by equilibrium credit rationing theory in addition the proportion of new loans issued under commitment does not increase significantly when credit markets are tight despite the fact that borrowers without commitments can be rationed whereas commitment borrowers are contractually insulated from rationing overall the data suggest that equilibrium rationing is not a significant macroeconomic phenomenon

a consumer perspective on price matching refund policies effect on price perceptions and search behavior although price matching refund policies are common in many retail environments the impact of such policies on consumers has largely been ignored this article reports the results of three studies that examine price matching policies from a consumer perspective study 1 shows that consumers perceive price matching policies as signals of low store prices and that the presence of a refund increases the likelihood of discontinuing price search contrary to the predictions based on signaling theory in information economics studies 2 and 3 show that when search costs are low the number of stores searched increases in the presence versus absence of a price matching policy when search costs are high consumers appear to accept the price matching signal at face value and search less in the presence of a refund the article concludes by discussing the theoretical implications of the findings and suggesting directions for future research

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

attitudes toward financial control systems in the united states and japan recently researchers have begun to investigate issues of differences in the use of managerial accounting tools across differing national environments much of this research is of the case study approach documenting actual practices for a small group of firms or a distillation from numerous observations but using anecdotal evidence to support various conjectures