Showing 1 - 10 of 311
We estimate the impact of COVID-19 on business failures for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) using firm-level data in seventeen countries. Absent government support, the failure rate of SMEs would have increased by 9.1 percentage points, representing 4.6 percent of private sector...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013244116
We use a new dataset of the universe of Greek corporate tax returns to study a voluntary tax compliance program for small firms. This “self-assessment” program prescribed target taxable profit margins (the ratio of taxable profits to revenues) for different types of activities. Firms that...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013289108
We analyze how increased access to financing affects firm total factor productivity (TFP) by exploiting a natural experiment following interstate banking deregulations which increased access to bank financing. We find that firms' TFP increases after their states implement these deregulations....
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013053481
This paper uses data from the 1993 National Survey of Small Business Finances to determine the extent to which minority-owned small businesses face constraints in the credit market beyond those faced by white-owned small businesses. First, we present qualitative evidence indicating that black-...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012750807
We focus on the economies of the North Atlantic Core during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and find that an impressive variety of local financial institutions emerged to supply the needs of SMEs wherever there was sufficient demand for their services. Although these intermediaries...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012783644
The majority of enterprises in developing countries have no paid workers. Is this optimal, or the result of frictions in labor markets? We conduct an experiment providing wage subsidies to randomly chosen microenterprises in Sri Lanka. In the presence of frictions, a short-term subsidy could...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012966594
Based on existing evidence, we know little about how the taxation of small business owners affects their economic activity. This paper studies the effect of two Finnish tax reforms, in 1997 and 1998, on the effort decisions of the owners of small businesses utilizing both theoretical model and...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013099817
Many basic economic theories with perfectly functioning markets do not predict the existence of the vast number of microenterprises readily observed across the world. We put forward a model that illuminates why financial and managerial capital constraints may impede experimentation, and thus...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013065641
A large share of the poor in developing countries run small enterprises, often earning low incomes. This paper explores whether the poor performance of businesses can be explained by a lack of basic business skills. We randomized the offer of a free, 48-hour business skills course to female...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013071515
We establish five facts about the informal economy in developing countries. First, it is huge, reaching about half of the total in the poorest countries. Second, it has extremely low productivity compared to the formal economy: informal firms are typically small, inefficient, and run by poorly...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013052683