Advisors for micro-entrepreneurs: is one as good as another in accessing alternative finance?

Maria Gaia Soana (), Doriana Cucinelli and Beatrice Ronchini
Additional contact information
Maria Gaia Soana: University of Parma
Doriana Cucinelli: University of Parma
Beatrice Ronchini: University of Parma

Small Business Economics, 2025, vol. 64, issue 3, No 8, 989-1033

Abstract: Abstract Using a novel large database of Italian micro-entrepreneurs, we investigate how different sources of external business advice affect access to alternative finance. We distinguish three categories of external business advice: professional financial, professional non-financial, and non-professional. We also test whether financial knowledge of micro-entrepreneurs enhances their advice seeking for financial decision-making. We find that the use of alternative financial instruments increases when external business advisors are used, but some are more useful than others. Only professional financial advice is shown to increase the probability of accessing alternative finance by micro-enterprises, while non-professional and professional non-financial advice does not have the same effect. We also find that being more financially literate increases the probability that micro-entrepreneurs seek advice from highly professional sources, i.e., objective financial knowledge helps shape the quality of financial advice requested.

Keywords: External business advice; alternative finance; micro-entrepreneurs; financial knowledge (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G2 G53 L26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11187-024-00942-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:sbusec:v:64:y:2025:i:3:d:10.1007_s11187-024-00942-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... 29/journal/11187/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11187-024-00942-y

Access Statistics for this article

Small Business Economics is currently edited by Zoltan J. Acs and David B. Audretsch

More articles in Small Business Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().