Solving the SME finance puzzle: an examination of demand and supply failure in the UK

Following economic instability after the Global Financial Crisis, the financing of small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) growth and productivity has become central to UK government policy for sustainable economic development, evidenced by the establishment of the British Business Bank and Regional Investment Funds. This paper considers demand-side and supply-side failures in the contemporary UK SME finance market. Adopting mixed methods, binary logit regression analysis of the 2015 UK Small Business Survey of 15,502 SMEs is sense-checked using qualitative participatory findings from 6 SME finance support advisors. Findings confirm the importance of SME size, age, management capability and use of appropriate, timely external advice. They support the resource-based view of SME access to finance, contributing to borrower discouragement and under investment, suggesting the need for improved support to upskill entrepreneurs’ financial management and investment readiness and the concept of an ‘holistic entrepreneurial finance ecosystem’ approach to assist UK SME finance

ISEE-3 observations of a viscously-driven plasma sheet: magnetosheath mass and/or momentum transfer?

International audienceA statistical analysis of data from the ISEE-3 distant tail campaign is presented. We investigate the mechanism driving slow, tailward flows observed in the plasma sheet. The possibility that these slow flows are driven by mass and/or momentum transfer across the distant tail magnetopause is explored. We establish that 40% of these flows could be driven by the transfer of approximately 4% of the magnetosheath momentum flux into the magnetotail. Current understanding of the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability suggests that this figure is consistent with the amount of momentum flux transfer produced by this mechanism. We also consider the possibility that these flows are solely driven by transferring magnetosheath plasma across the magnetopause. We find that there is sufficient mass observed on these field lines for this to be the sole driving mechanism for only 27% of the observed slow flows

Modelling the response of vascular tumours to chemotherapy: A multiscale approach

An existing multiscale model is extended to study the response of a vascularised tumour to treatment with chemotherapeutic drugs which target proliferating cells. The underlying hybrid cellular automaton model couples tissue-level processes (e.g. blood flow, vascular adaptation, oxygen and drug transport) with cellular and subcellular phenomena (e.g. competition for space, progress through the cell cycle, natural cell death and drug-induced cell kill and the expression of angiogenic factors). New simulations suggest that, in the absence of therapy, vascular adaptation induced by angiogenic factors can stimulate spatio-temporal oscillations in the tumour's composition.\ud \ud Numerical simulations are presented and show that, depending on the choice of model parameters, when a drug which kills proliferating cells is continuously infused through the vasculature, three cases may arise: the tumour is eliminated by the drug; the tumour continues to expand into the normal tissue; or, the tumour undergoes spatio-temporal oscillations, with regions of high vascular and tumour cell density alternating with regions of low vascular and tumour cell density. The implications of these results and possible directions for future research are also discussed

SUPPLY AND DEMAND RISKS IN LABORATORY FORWARD AND SPOT MARKETS: IMPLICATIONS FOR AGRICULTURE

Laboratory experimental methods are used to investigate the impacts of supply and/or demand risks on prices, quantities traded, and earnings within forward and spot market institutions. Random demand and/or supply shifts can be as much as 25 percent of the expected equilibrium outcome. Nevertheless, results suggest that the spot or forward trading institution itself has a greater influence on market outcomes than the presence of risk within the trading institutions. Sellers tend to have relatively higher earnings in a spot market than buyers, regardless of the risk. Total surplus, however, generally is greater in a forward market.laboratory markets, forward market, spot market, supply and/or demand risks, Demand and Price Analysis, Marketing,

SUPPLY AND DEMAND RISKS IN FORWARD AND SPOT MARKETS: IMPLICATIONS FOR AGRICULTURE

Laboratory methods are used to investigate the impacts of supply and/or demand risks on prices, quantities traded, and earnings within forward and spot market institutions. Results suggest that the spot or forward trading institution itself has a greater influence on market outcomes than supply/demand risks within the institution.Marketing,

Hole Doping Effects on Spin-gapped Na2Cu2TeO6 via Topochemical Na Deficiency

We report the magnetic susceptibility and NMR studies of a spin-gapped layered compound Na2Cu2TeO6 (the spin gap $\Delta\sim$ 250 K), the hole doping effect on the Cu2TeO6 plane via a topochemical Na deficiency by soft chemical treatment, and the static spin vacancy effect by nonmagnetic impurity Zn substitution for Cu. A finite Knight shift at the $^{125}$Te site was observed for pure Na2Cu2TeO6. The negative hyperfine coupling constant $^{125}A_{tr}$ is an evidence for the existence of a superexchange pathway of the Cu-O-Te-O-Cu bond. It turned out that both the Na deficiency and Zn impurities induce a Curie-type magnetism in the uniform spin susceptibility in an external magnetic field of 1 T, but only the Zn impurities enhance the low-temperature $^{23}$Na nuclear spin-lattice relaxation rate whereas the Na deficiency suppresses it. A spin glass behavior was observed for the Na-deficient samples but not for the Zn-substituted samples. The dynamics of the unpaired moments of the doped holes are different from that of the spin vacancy in the spin-gapped Cu2TeO6 planes.Comment: 4 pages, 7 figures, to be published in J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. Vol. 75, No. 8 (2006

Barro's fertility equations: the robustness of the role of female education and income

Barro and Lee (1994) and Barro and Sala-i-Martin (1995) find that real per-capita GDP and both male and female education have important effects on fertility in their cross-country empirical studies. In order to assess the robustness of their results, their estimated models are subjected to specification and diagnostic testing, the effects on the model of using the improved Barro and Lee (1996) cross-country data on educational attainment of the population aged 15 and over are examined, and the different specifications used by Barro and Lee and by Barro and Sala-i-Martin compared. The results obtained suggest that their fertility equations do not perform well in terms of diagnostic testing, and are very sensitive to the use of different vintages of the educational attainment proxies and of the Summers-Heston cross-country income data. A robust explanation of fertility, to link with empirical growth equations, has, therefore, not yet been found; further work is required in this area

Blockchain and other innovations in entrepreneurial finance: implications for future policy

More than a decade after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2007–08, entrepreneurial finance has exhibited enormous changes, notably in the rise of alternative nonbank financing. This has been most acutely experienced in the provision and delivery of early stage and innovative business finance—the focus of this special issue. The ensuing innovations in entrepreneurial finance have taken place in developed and developing economies, presenting considerable challenges to policymakers. This editorial paper reviews the special issue articles on this subject and their implications for future research, practice and policy

A Magnetically-Switched, Rotating Black Hole Model For the Production of Extragalactic Radio Jets and the Fanaroff and Riley Class Division

A model is presented in which both Fanaroff and Riley class I and II extragalactic jets are produced by magnetized accretion disk coronae in the ergospheres of rotating black holes. While the jets are produced in the accretion disk itself, the output power still is an increasing function of the black hole angular momentum. For high enough spin, the black hole triggers the magnetic switch, producing highly-relativistic, kinetic-energy-dominated jets instead of Poynting-flux-dominated ones for lower spin. The coronal mass densities needed to trigger the switch at the observed FR break power are quite small ($\sim 10^{-15} g cm^{-3}$), implying that the source of the jet material may be either a pair plasma or very tenuous electron-proton corona, not the main accretion disk itself. The model explains the differences in morphology and Mach number between FR I and II sources and the observed trend for massive galaxies to undergo the FR I/II transition at higher radio power. It also is consistent with the energy content of extended radio lobes and explains why, because of black hole spindown, the space density of FR II sources should evolve more rapidly than that of FR I sources. If the present model is correct, then the ensemble average speed of parsec-scale jets in sources distinguished by their FR I morphology (not luminosity) should be distinctly slower than that for sources with FR II morphology. The model also suggests the existence of a population of high-redshift, sub-mJy FR I and II radio sources associated with spiral or pre-spiral galaxies that flared once when their black holes were formed but were never again re-kindled by mergers.Comment: 14 pages, 2 figures, final version to appear in Sept Ap