Labour productivity differs significantly between small, medium-sized and large enterprises in the private enterprise sector. This holds both for the level of labour productivity as well as its development. Size-class differences regarding the level of labour productivity are only to a limited...

We investigate the interplay between entrepreneurial activity, the business cycle and unemployment in relation to the openness of the economy. Also, we explore to what extent the observation frequency (quarterly versus annual data) influences estimation results. Following empirical literature,...

Workplace innovation can be defined as the implementation of new and combined interventions in work organisation, HRM and supportive technologies, and strategies to improve performance of organisations and quality of jobs. Previous research confirms the presence of a positive relationship...

There is evidence that entrepreneurial activity plays a non-negligible role in driving economic development. In this paper we investigate whether the industry in which the entrepreneurial activity takes place matters for economic growth, both in developed and developing countries. We distinguish...

This paper examines the impact of employment protection legislation (EPL) on hiring decisions by own-account workers and firing decisions by very small firms (1-4 employees). Using data from the EU-15 countries, our results show that the strictness of employment protection legislation is...

Until seven years ago, user innovation studies focused on specific cases or industries, leaving room for criticism that the phenomenon is marginal. This chapter summarizes and discusses the empirical work concerned with the scope of user innovation in broader samples. A first finding is that...

At the meso-economic level, GDP is defined as the balance between sales of final goods and services and sales of intermediate goods and services on the one hand, and the use of domestically produced and imported intermediate goods on the other. At the macro-economic level, sales of intermediate...

This paper focuses on SMEs – firms with 250 employees at most – and the proportion of their requested loan that is granted by the bank. Financial data for SMEs in 38 European countries for 2011 are used (SMEs’ Access to Finance survey) to test the relationship between ownership structure...

This paper focuses on certain drivers of SME sales growth related to knowledge and innovation. Building on the dynamic capabilities literature, we test whether two organizational capabilities (external sourcing and employee involvement in renewal activities) predict sales growth, and if so,...

We study the role of the business cycle in the individual decision of own-account workers to hire employees. Using panel data from the European Community Household Panel for the EU-15 countries, we show that own-account workers are less likely to hire employees during recessions. Next, we focus...