Though without any vital significance in the economic literature and the media smalland medium-sized enterprises (SME) represent the sector of real economic power and the largest employer both in Germany and Europe. The official statistics are self-explaining (IfM Bonn 2005, DSGV 2005): • More than 3.3 million SME exist in Germany at present. • These enterprises provide about 70 per cent of the...

Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are acknowledged worldwide as the drivers of socio-economic development due to their important role in GDP growth, new job creation and entrepreneurship. Despite the immense impact of the most severe economic crisis modern world has witnessed on the SME sector, number of scholarly studies focusing on the investigation of the performance factors of the S...

This EIF Working Paper takes a holistic approach to investigate SME financing patterns in Europe by performing a cluster analysis including 12,726 SMEs in 28 European countries. The results reveal that SME financing in Europe is not homogenous but that different financing patterns exist. The cluster analysis identifies six distinct SME financing types: mixed-financed SMEs, statesubsidised SMEs,...

blends of sorghum and soybean flours were processed in a co-rotating twin screw extruder to prepare expanded product. response surface methodology (rsm) was used to study the effect of soya level (sl), feed moisture (fm), barrel temperature (bt) and screw speed (ss) on extruder system parameters and physical properties of the extrudate. response variables were product temperature (pt), motor to...

An encompassing model of a business loan contract with the bank is constructed to establish the roles and relative importance of asymmetry of information, market power, borrower (entrepreneurial) effort and quality in explaining contract features. Special cases of the model include symmetric versus asymmetric information regimes, competition versus monopoly power, adverse selection versus moral...

A new method for analysis of microarray gene expression experiments referred to as Sum-based Meta-analytical Enrichment (SME) is proposed in this manuscript. SME is a combined enrichment and meta-analytical approach to infer on the association of gene sets with particular phenotypes. SME allows enrichment to be performed across datasets, which to our knowledge was not earlier possible. As a pro...

Background. Liver fibrosis is a significant liver disease in Asian countries. Sedum mexicanum Britt. (SM) has been claimed to have antihepatitis efficacy. In traditional folk medicine, a solution of boiling water-extracted SM (SME) is consumed to prevent and treat hepatitis. However, its efficacy has not yet been verified. The purpose of this study was to investigate the in vitro effect of SME ...

This paper compares the performance of the Structure-Mapping Engzne (SME), a cognitive simulation of analogy, with two aspects of human performance. Gentner’s Structure-Mappzng theory predicts that soundness is highest for relational matches, while accessibility is highest for surface matches. These predictions have been borne out in psychological studies, and here we demonstrate that SME repli...

The aim of this study was to investigate the cytoprotective properties of the ethyl acetate fraction of Sargassum muticum (SME) against ultraviolet B (UVB)-induced cell damage in human keratinocytes (HaCaT cells). SME exhibited scavenging activity toward the 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl radicals and hydrogen peroxide (H(2)O(2)) and UVB-induced intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS). SME a...