Article
Details
Citation
Carter S, Vos E, Yeh AJ & Tagg S (2007) The Happy Story of Small Business Financing. Journal of Banking and Finance, 31 (9), pp. 2648-2672. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbankfin.2006.09.011
Abstract
We examine two data sets, one from the UK (n = 15,750) and one from the US (n = 3239), to show that SME financial behaviour demonstrates substantial financial contentment, or ¡®happiness¡¯. We find fewer than 10% of the UK firms seek significant growth and only 1.32% of US firms list a shortage of capital other than working capital as a problem. Financial performance indicators (growth, return on assets, profit margin) were not found to be determinants of SME financing activities, as might be expected in a ¡®rational¡¯ risk¨Creturn environment. Younger and less educated SME owners more actively use external financing ¨C even though more education reduces the fear of loan denial ¨C while older and more educated (¡®wiser¡¯) SME owners are found to be being less likely to seek or use external financing. The contentment hypothesis for SME financing also extends to high-growth firms in that we show that they participate more in the loan markets than low-growth firms. By way of contrast to the finance gap hypothesis, the contentment hypothesis observes the importance of social networks (connections) [for finance] and confirms the ¡®connections ¨C happiness¡¯ linkage in the literature on happiness while doubting the theoretical suitability of Jensen and Meckling [Jensen, M., Meckling, W., 1976. Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs, and ownership structure. Journal of Financial Economics 3, 305¨C360.] base-case analysis for SMEs.
Keywords
; Small business Finance; Economic development.
Journal
Journal of Banking and Finance: Volume 31, Issue 9
| Status | Published |
|---|---|
| Publication date | 30/09/2007 |
| Publication date online | 26/01/2007 |
| URL | |
| Publisher | Elsevier |
| ISSN | 0378-4266 |