The provision of advisory support to small firms is almost ubiquitous in OECD countries, although it is organised in different ways and is justified on slightly different grounds. In England publicly supported advisory services are provided through the Business Link (BL) network. Here, we...

One of the key policy objectives of government at national and regional level, is to overcome the constraints preventing local industry achieving greater competitiveness in the international market-place. This paper examines the impact of grant assistance to Northern Ireland small firms...

The evaluation of industrial policy interventions has attracted increasing policy and academic attention in recent years. Despite the widespread consensus regarding the need for evaluation, the issue of how to evaluate, and the associated methodological considerations, continue to be issues of...

This paper aims to contribute to the debate about the role of the public sector in stimulating greater use of private sector equity for business start-up and growth in two ways. First, to examine the extent to which the provision of public sector equity finance enables individual firms to raise...

This article presents an innovative approach to estimating the additionality of financial assistance awarded to firms by an Irish regional development agency. The 'self assessment approach' is used to derive estimates of deadweight and displacement for firms in the Shannon region of Ireland....

In England, publicly supported advice to small firms is organized primarily through the Business Link (BL) network. Using the programme theory underlying this business support, we develop four propositions and test these empirically using data from a new survey of over 3000 English SMEs. We find...

Business networks have been described as cooperative arrangements between independent business organisations that vary from contractual joint ventures to informal exchanges of information. This collaboration has become recognised as an innovative and efficient tool for organising interdependent...

Most advanced economies offer publicly financed advice services to start-up firms and SMEs. In England, local or regional Business Links organisations have provided these services, and divided their support into nonintensive one-off contacts providing information or advice and more intensive...