Serial correlation in annual growth rates carries a lot of information on growth processes – it allows us to directly observe firm performance as well as to test theories. Using a 7-year balanced panel of 10 000 French manufacturing firms, we observe that small firms typically are subject to negative correlation of annual growth rates, whereas larger firms display positive correlation. Furtherm...

Ojala, Arto Internationalization of software firms: Finnish small and medium-sized software firms in Japan Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä, 2008, 57 p. (+ articles) (Jyväskylä Studies in Computing, ISSN 1456-5390; 89) ISBN 978-951-39-3251-0 (PDF), 978-951-39-3130-8 (nid.) Finnish summary Diss. This dissertation investigates internationalization of small and medium-sized software firms first ...

This paper reviews the experience of small and medium enterprises in recent years in the Philippines. It notes that, while Philippines economic growth picked up in the early 1990s, the share of its small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in manufacturing employment and value added stayed roughly constant. However, the overall stability masks some dynamism across firm sizes and sectors. Thus, very s...

The University of Glamorgan has been allocated European Union monies to assist in increasing the entrepreneurial capacity of the region through a programme of work entitled Enterprise College Wales (ECW). The programme currently consists of an on-line web based degree in Enterprise, aimed at creating business start-ups, new business ideas and business development and growth in areas where typic...

This paper analyses the role of small firms in the evolution of the information technology sector in Finland. This sector consists of relevant manufacturing and telecommunications industries as well as relevant wholesale and service industries. The investigation period extends from 1993 to 1997. We find that, as a whole, large firms create more jobs than do smaller firms. In contrast, our regre...

Introduction Most small firms will never be able to raise all the funding they would like from banks and other institutions. In this crude sense there will always be a deficiency in the funding of the sector equal to the difference between the total demand for funding and that part of this demand which qualifies for funding support. This paper focuses more narrowly on the debt versus equity pre...

The bulk of corporate governance theory examines the agency problems that arise from two extreme ownership structures: 100 percent small shareholders or one large, controlling owner combined with small shareholders. In this paper, we question the empirical validity of this dichotomy. In fact, one-third of publicly listed firms in Europe have multiple large owners, and the market value of firms ...

We examine the relationship between the equilibrium number of the firms entering the market and socially efficient one. Salop (1979) investigates a mill pricing model and shows that the former is larger than the latter (excess entry theorem). We find that, in contrast to Salop (1979), the equilibrium number of the firms can be either larger or smaller than the efficient one. If the entry cost i...

This paper studies ways to support sustainable growth in high technology small firms by managing innovation. The paper examines technology based and knowledge intensive business service firms (KIBS) and their innovation management in Finland. The goal is to find at least one meaningful innovation process for a small KIBS firm that takes growth into consideration. In the paper incremental, radic...

This paper aims at exploring conditions under which the need for knowledge exchange within a small firms’ cluster generates a structure of links between firms. We focus in particular on small firms’ clusters called Industrial Districts (IDs). Specifically, we analyze IDs with flexible specialization, in which knowledge exchange is driven by the search for complementary knowledge assets. Previou...