Small business is a sacred cow in America. In 1958, Congress created the Small Business Investment Company ("SBIC"), a unique public-private program that provides long-term capital to small entrepreneurs. From its inception, however, the SBIC has been plagued by inefficiency and failure. Yet,...

Screening requirements are common features of fraud and corruption mitigation efforts around the world. Yet imposing these requirements involves trade-offs between higher administrative costs, delayed benefits, and exclusion of genuine beneficiaries on one hand and lower fraud on the other. We...

This paper examines how government funding programs geared towards early-stage companies interact with private capital markets. Using hand-collected data on 755 government programs worldwide, we find that governments’ allocations to such funding programs have been comparable to global venture...

Screening requirements are common features of fraud and corruption mitigation efforts around the world. Yet imposing these requirements involves trade-offs between higher administrative costs, delayed benefits, and exclusion of genuine beneficiaries on one hand and lower fraud on the other. We...

Recently in Korea the number of financially distressed businesses, or zombie firms, has surged. This paper analyzes the growth of zombie firms in Korea, identifies key challenges associated with helping these firms recover post-pandemic, and describes the implications for policy carried by the...

Recent research says 20 percent of Korean manufacturers are stalled-growth small and medium enterprises (SMEs), or companies that have been business for at least 20 years but have under 50 employees, with market factors causing 65 percent of such stagnation and the businesses themselves 35...

The Korean government is considering providing a fourth round of disaster relief funding to support small businesses hard-hit by the prolonged social distancing measures implemented to contain the spread of COVID-19. However, determining which businesses should benefit from this support is quite...

What is “small” in the eyes of the law? In fact, there is not one standard definition. Current lax legal definitions of firm’s size are inconsistent and overinclusive. They result in data distortion that reinforces favoritism toward small entities as studies on the contribution of small...

This report examines the allocation of Finland's green transition and digitalization-related subsidies on an an- nual basis. The analysis utilizes the business subsidy in- formation service system maintained by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment, which provides com- prehensive data...

This report examines the allocation of Finland's green transition and digitalization-related subsidies on an an- nual basis. The analysis utilizes the business subsidy in- formation service system maintained by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment, which provides com- prehensive data...