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

Marc Cowling, Weixi Liu, Ning Zhang

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

97 Citations (SciVal)
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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.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)77-100
Number of pages24
JournalJournal of Evolutionary Economics
Volume28
Issue number1
Early online date10 May 2017
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jan 2018

Keywords

  • Entrepreneurs experience
  • Financial crisis
  • Firm age
  • Job dynamics
  • Sales dynamics

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Business,Management and Accounting
  • Economics and Econometrics

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