Did firm age, experience, and access to finance count? SME performance after the global financial crisis

Marc Cowling, Weixi Liu and Ning Zhang ()
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Ning Zhang: University of the West of England

Journal of Evolutionary Economics, 2018, vol. 28, issue 1, No 4, 77-100

Abstract: Abstract This paper examines the relationships between firm age and entrepreneurs experience on SME performance after the 2008/09 global financial crisis. We find that in general the crisis had a long-lasting scarring effect on the SME sector, but there is evidence of some recovery in performance. Interestingly, the well-established, and negative, firm age-growth relationship still holds, but entrepreneurial experience did not have any substantive effects on small business performance. Our findings suggest that the severity of the crisis meant that previous entrepreneur experiences had little value in this unique and uncertain environment. However, young firms still accounted for a disproportionately high share of growth, especially among the fastest growing firms.

Keywords: Firm age; Entrepreneurs experience; Job dynamics; Sales dynamics; Financial crisis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L25 L26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (30)

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DOI: 10.1007/s00191-017-0502-z

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