Small and medium-sized enterprise policy: Designed to fail?

Significant doubts persist over the effectiveness of government policy to increase the numbers or performance of small and medium-sized enterprises in the UK economy. We analyse UK political manifestoes from 1964-2015 to examine the development of SME policy in political discourse. We do this by analysing how the broadly-defined category of ‘SME’ has been characterised in the manifestoes and assess these characterisations in relation to the empirical evidence base. We highlight three consistent themes in UK political manifestoes during 1964-2015 where SMEs have been characterised as having the potential for growth, struggling to access finance and being over-burdened by regulation. We argue that homogenising the broad range of businesses represented by the SME category and characterising them in these terms misrepresents them, undermining policies developed in relation to this mischaracterisation

Effect of perceived default risk and accounting information quality on the decision to grant credit to SMEs

ABSTRACT: The present study analyses the influence that perceived default risk and accounting information quality have on the process of credit granting to SMEs. Empirical evidence was obtained from a survey of 471 bank loan officers in Spain, in which they were asked to answer questions relating to audited and not-audited firms. Through a Structural Equations Modeling (SEM) approach, the results confirm that the likelihood that the loan officers are more willing to provide access to credit to SMEs, and to do so in more favourable conditions, is negatively influenced by perceived default risk and positively influenced by the general perception about accounting information quality. Besides, we find that information quality is an antecedent of perceived risk, so that the latter becomes the central element of the research model. Additionally, the perceptions of the decision-makers regarding all the analysed variables are better for the audited SMEs than for the unaudited ones

Emerging Use of Early Health Technology Assessment in Medical Product Development: A Scoping Review of the Literature

Early health technology assessment is increasingly being used to support health economic evidence development during early stages of clinical research. Such early models can be used to inform research and development about the design and management of new medical technologies to mitigate the risks, perceived by industry and the public sector, associated with market access and reimbursement. Over the past 25 years it has been suggested that health economic evaluation in the early stages may benefit the development and diffusion of medical products. Early health technology assessment has been suggested in the context of iterative economic evaluation alongside phase I and II clinical research to inform clinical trial design, market access, and pricing. In addition, performing early health technology assessment was also proposed at an even earlier stage for managing technology portfolios. This scoping review suggests a generally accepted definition of early health technology assessment to be “all methods used to inform industry and other stakeholders about the potential value of new medical products in development, including methods to quantify and manage uncertainty”. The present review also aimed to identify recent published empirical studies employing an early-stage assessment of a medical product. With most included studies carried out to support a market launch, the dominant methodology was early health economic modeling. Further methodological development is required, in particular, by combining systems engineering and health economics to manage uncertainty in medical product portfolios

Financing entrepreneurship

In an entrepreneurial market economy, every economic activity needs specific financing in order to be effectively realized. The entrepreneur needs finance to fund innovation projects. Financial markets and banks have to find entrepreneurs to whom they could grant credit in order to realize profits from their own activities. Economic development mainly comes from innovative projects which allow people to produce more and better products (goods and services). In the capitalist economy, entrepreneurs are the real sources of economic dynamics while banks and financial institutions and resources are the monetary dynamics of economic change. Changes in the conditions of financing of entrepreneurship affect therefore the path of economic development. Hence, searching for relevant economic policies aiming at creating incentives to innovate in entrepreneurship and in financing mechanisms of productive activities is one of the major issues that analysts and policy makers have to deal with

Financing entrepreneurship

International audienc

Forget R&D – pay my coach: young innovative companies and their relations with universities

32 p., 8 tables and referencesYoung innovative companies (YICs) are attracting attention in their role of industry regenerators. However, we have little information about their relations with universities as sources of information. This paper explores university-industry interaction involving YIC in the Valencian Community, using YIC founders’ personal attributes and motivations as explanatory variables. The Valencian Community has a relatively high degree of university-industry interaction, but surprisingly little technological innovation. A survey of YICs in the region shows that, in their case, firm size does not affect the probability of contracting with universities, and that R&D intensity is not significant if we consider firm founders’ personal characteristics and motivations. YIC founders exploiting market opportunities recognized in previous business activities, and necessity entrepreneurs, are the least likely to interact with universities. We highlight the role of external advisory services to highlight the benefits of universities.Peer reviewe