Small Business Economics最新文献

The advent of COVID-19 portended a dire liquidity crunch for small firms as traditional external funding sources were severely curtailed. Defying expectations, initial equity crowdfunding (ECF) campaigns not only withstood the pandemic’s onslaught but also saw unprecedented growth in funding volume, investor participation and overfunding. The upshot was that external equity, the traditional funding of last resort, became the first choice. Increased ECF funding especially for seed ventures are likely linked to government-backed loan guarantee schemes that acted as a quality signal for investors. The paper highlights the unanticipated positive synergies between public support mechanisms and private equity dynamics where equity was funding of first choice for many small firms seeking external funding. These developments underscore ECF’s central role in digitally channelling equity capital to small firms during a period of heightened economic uncertainty.

In recent decades, though the number of female entrepreneurs has grown, a gender gap remains. Self-confidence plays a pivotal role in understanding these differences. We examine gender and target margins in a vast dataset spanning Latin America, the Caribbean, and Sub-Saharan Africa. We use linear and interval regression analysis to estimate the relationship between gender and setting target margins. We find that female-led ventures are nearly five percentage points less likely to establish target margins compared to male-led ventures, even after adjusting for observable factors. Furthermore, ventures founded by women tend to set lower target margins than those with only male founders. These disparities could be attributed to intrinsic gender characteristics, contextual influences, and unique company traits. Given the link between profit margins and self-confidence, these findings suggest that, due to their self-assurance, typically higher, male entrepreneurs often set more ambitious goals, resulting in higher profits. To promote gender equality in entrepreneurship, policymakers, accelerators, and incubators should focus on bolstering the confidence of female entrepreneurs.

Drawing on institutional and demand-side perspectives, we investigate performance implications of (de)centralized governance modes in platform-based new ventures, and the conditions under which (de)centralization generates more value. Using a sample of 1,431 Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), a new source of entrepreneurial finance, we find that centralization of decision-making is positively associated with platforms’ market value. Further, we consider how platform characteristics affect this relationship, finding that both the presence of an experienced Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and project transparency negatively moderate the positive relationship between centralization and market value. Thus, decentralized platforms need leaders with technical experience and project transparency to generate more value. Overall, this study provides a better understanding of the boundary conditions that increase the value of (de)centralized governance.

Enterprise policy, which seeks to stimulate start-ups and support small businesses, attracts significant investment from government and shapes the context for entrepreneurs. Researchers have begun to study the processes underlying the formulation of enterprise policy. However, accounts of how competing interests seek to influence enterprise policymaking processes remain rare. Utilising a distinctive approach to narrative entrepreneurship, developed through a narrative policy analysis, we examine archival records of submissions from a range of stakeholders to a UK government inquiry. We develop a narrative entrepreneurship approach that allows us to analyse the stories and broader narratives told by entrepreneurs and others. Our analysis identifies different types of narrative strategy used to develop stories by two competing interest groups: a narrative from small businesses and their representatives and, contesting this, a counternarrative from other stakeholders, including the finance industry, consumer groups and large firms. We analyse how the inquiry engaged with these competing narratives and sought to make them amenable to policymaking through the creation of a simplifying, overarching metanarrative. We demonstrate that, while this metanarrative simplified the uncertain, complex and polarised issue of enterprise policy, it masked and did not resolve the underlying tensions between competing interests.

This paper evaluates the impact of awarding a second investment grant to the same firm. We implement a Regression Discontinuity Design strategy using a rich firm-level administrative database, which allows us to link applications to grants and their scores to firms’ performance. Our results show that while a single grant has a positive impact on firms’ labour productivity, a second investment grant produces an even stronger effect. A more granular analysis suggests that only micro- and small-sized firms benefit from a single grant, whereas the overall effect of an investment grant booster shot is confirmed for the micro- and small-sized firms. No effects were found on total factor productivity for either the single or the second grant.

Communication between different fields in universities is often hindered by the “multi-tower” problem: each focuses on its own questions and issues and tends to ignore work in other, even closely related ones. This occurs in part, because each field has its own terminology theories, journals, and conferences and because university policies claiming ownership of researchers’ findings restrict them from sharing this knowledge with others. Entrepreneurship, by welcoming input from many different sources—economics, sociology, strategic management, and psychology—avoids the “multi-tower” problem; this is one of its important strengths. In his own work, the author has sought to broaden the range of entrepreneurship research by “importing” findings and theory from psychology that are relevant to understanding entrepreneurs, the personal factors that affect their success, and important aspects of the entrepreneurial process overall.

Colors may enhance entrepreneurial behavior. It is well known that creativity can lead to entrepreneurial behavior, and it is argued in the psychology literature that colors can influence an individual’s creativity. In this paper, we explore the empirical relationship between colors and entrepreneurial behavior under the literature-based hypothesis that yellows and oranges enhance an individual’s creative emotions. Our findings open the door for future research on the psychology of colors and entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurs tend to be risk tolerant but is higher risk tolerance always better? In a sample of about 2100 small businesses, we find an inverted U-shaped relation between risk tolerance and profitability. This relationship holds in a simple bilateral regression, and even after controlling for a large set of individual and business characteristics. Apparently, one major transmission goes from risk tolerance via investments to profits. This is quite robust as it applies for both past and planned investments. Considering business survival, we show, first, that less profitable businesses leave the market while moderately risk tolerant entrepreneurs survive more often. Second, the high risk-low profit part of the U-shaped relation seems to disappear among businesses being 4 years and older, indicating that such inferior risk-profit combinations disappear over time. These findings are important for the concept of business readiness trainings as the motivation (and ability) to take risks should potentially be accompanied by some warning that taking too much risk can be detrimental to long-term business success.

Existing research establishes that minority borrowers, particularly Black small business owners, faced significant challenges in accessing funds from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), especially in its early stages. We find that institutional and racial disparities persist during the PPP loan forgiveness stage. Controlling for various loan- and borrower-level characteristics, we demonstrate that relationship lenders—community banks, credit unions, and farm credit institutions—are associated with higher rates of PPP loan forgiveness. In contrast, automated lenders—fintechs and fintech banks—exhibit the lowest forgiveness rates. Black borrowers experience the poorest outcomes, except for loans issued by non-depository fintech and lenders categorized as “other,” where they outperform White borrowers. Loan forgiveness rates improve, and racial disparities diminish, with increased lender concentration in specific economic sectors. Thus, specialized relationship lenders may have the highest odds of achieving the best and most equitable lending outcomes.

This meta-analysis examines the relationship between entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) elements and regional entrepreneurial activity (EA). An extensive literature search is performed to identify quantitative studies covering EE elements and EA at the regional level (257 studies) and to extract relevant data (2,241,813 observations). To synthesize the findings, we group the potential antecedent variables based on Stam’s (European Planning Studies, 23(9):1759-1769, 2015) EE framework. The results show large differences in the effect sizes and relevance of EE elements. Based on the empirical results, three relevant elements underlying all EEs are identified: demand, talent, and finance. Our results remain robust after using different methods for variable grouping, applying meta-analytic regression, and controlling for country, publication specifics, and grouping errors. Propositions for building an EE theory are derived, and future research opportunities are discussed, as well as policy implications.