Most countries have set up structures and programs for new business creation and financing. We analyze strategies implemented in France, Germany and United Kingdom, where the proportion of government funds in venture capital financing is significantly smaller than in the Quebec, yet the rate of...

In recent years, businesses in many states have been given the opportunity to select a new form in which to conduct business called the limited liability company. This form provides the advantage of the personal liability protection of a corporation, while being taxed as a partnership. If most...

This paper uses cross-sectional surveys of 1991 and 1997, and a panel survey of firms surviving between 1991 and 1997, to compare the levels of use by SMEs of external business advice. The analysis demonstrates only modest changes over time in aggregate use, and these are not statistically...

Market size structure refers to the distribution of shares of different size classes of local market participants, where the sizes are inclusive of assets both within and outside the local market. We apply this new measure of market structure in two empirical analyses of the U.S. banking...

New Zealand (NZ) has been proclaimed as a leader in entrepreneurship by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) assessment. This paper links GEM findings to results from a NZ-based survey of micro-business operators and identifies factors that explain why NZ is a leader in the Entrepreneurship...

Small firms are seen as important drivers of dynamics and innovation. They need to be particularly flexible and be able to react quickly to new challenges. This paper uses the latest change in dismissal protection legislation in Germany as a natural experiment and tries to find causal effects on...

What is the role of entrepreneurship in economic development? At a minimum the answer should be able to explain the role of entrepreneurs in the structural transformation of countries from low income, primary-sector based societies into high-income service and technology based societies. More...