IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/uow/depec1/wp03-18.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Public Policy and Small and Medium Enterprise Development

Author

Abstract

We review the policy arguments in favour of assisting SMEs in various areas of their operations. Our review suggests that many of the arguments put forward for subsidising SME activities (as distinct from some activities of firms regardless of size) are not economically justified. Nonetheless, it is widely acknowledged that SMEs suffer from disadvantage relative to large firms, principally in the areas of access to information and technology. We then study the possibilities offered by networks in helping SMEs deal with the disadvantages they experience. Our examination indicates that there are benefits that firms can derive from participating in networks. Further, because networks can assist firms overcome some of their inherent disadvantages, they can become less reliant on public assistance and more able to compete on an equal footing with larger firms once the initial impetus is provided for the formation of cooperative networks that can enable firms to compete more effectively.

Suggested Citation

  • Harvie, Charles & Lee, Boon-Chye, 2003. "Public Policy and Small and Medium Enterprise Development," Economics Working Papers wp03-18, School of Economics, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia.
    • Handle: RePEc:uow:depec1:wp03-18
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.uow.edu.au/content/groups/public/@web/@commerce/@econ/documents/doc/uow012160.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rabellotti, Roberta, 1995. "Is there an "industrial district model"? Footwear districts in Italy and Mexico compared," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 29-41, January.
    2. Belli, Pedro, 1997. "The comparative advantage of government : a review," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1834, The World Bank.
    3. George Symeonidis, 2000. "Price Competition and Market Structure: The Impact of Cartel Policy on Concentration in the UK," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(1), pages 1-26, March.
    4. Charles Harvie, 2003. "Regional SMEs and Competition in the Wake of the Financial and Economic Crisis," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Tran Hoa & Charles Harvie (ed.), New Asian Regionalism, chapter 6, pages 96-124, Palgrave Macmillan.
    5. Shrieves, Ronald E, 1978. "Market Structure and Innovation: A New Perspective," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(4), pages 329-347, June.
    6. K. M. Hawtrey, 1997. "FINANCE FOR AUSTRALIAN SMEs: POLICY ISSUES," Economic Papers, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 16(2), pages 39-50, June.
    7. Gans, Joshua S & Quiggin, John, 2003. "A Technological and Organisational Explanation for the Size Distribution of Firms," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 21(3), pages 243-256, November.
    8. Sunil Mani, 2002. "Government, Innovation and Technology Policy," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 2688.
    9. Humphrey, John & Schmitz, Hubert, 1996. "The Triple C approach to local industrial policy," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 24(12), pages 1859-1877, December.
    10. Freeman, C., 1991. "Networks of innovators: A synthesis of research issues," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 20(5), pages 499-514, October.
    11. Schmitz, Hubert & Nadvi, Khalid, 1999. "Clustering and Industrialization: Introduction," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 27(9), pages 1503-1514, September.
    12. Anderson, R.D. & Khosha, S.D., 1995. "Competition Policy as a Dimension of Economic Policy: A Comparative Perspective," Gouvernement du Canada - Industrial Organization 7, Gouvernement du Canada - Industry Canada.
    13. Soete, Luc & Verspagen, Bart & ter Weel, Bas, 2010. "Systems of Innovation," Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, in: Bronwyn H. Hall & Nathan Rosenberg (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1159-1180, Elsevier.
    14. Humphrey, John, 1995. "Industrial reorganization in developing countries: From models to trajectories," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 149-162, January.
    15. Hallberg, K., 2000. "A Market-Oriented Strategy for Small and Medium Scale Enterprises," Papers 40, World Bank - International Finance Corporation.
    16. Audretsch, David B. & Baumol, William J. & Burke, Andrew E., 2001. "Competition policy in dynamic markets," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 19(5), pages 613-634, April.
    17. Cohen, Wesley M & Levinthal, Daniel A, 1989. "Innovation and Learning: The Two Faces of R&D," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 99(397), pages 569-596, September.
    18. DeBresson, Chris & Amesse, Fernand, 1991. "Networks of innovators :A review and introduction to the issue," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 20(5), pages 363-379, October.
    19. Vernon, Raymond, 1979. "The Product Cycle Hypothesis in a New International Environment," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 41(4), pages 255-267, November.
    20. S. Baranzoni & P. Bianchi & L. Lambertini, 2000. "Multiproduct Firms, Product Differentiation, and Market Structure," Working Papers 368, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    21. Geroski, P A, 1990. "Innovation, Technological Opportunity, and Market Structure," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 42(3), pages 586-602, July.
    22. Nooteboom, Bart, 1999. "Innovation and inter-firm linkages: new implications for policy," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 28(8), pages 793-805, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Fischer, Manfred M. & Varga, Attila, 1999. "Technological Innovation and Interfirm Cooperation," ERSA conference papers ersa99pa010, European Regional Science Association.
    2. Manfred M. Fischer, 1998. "The innovation process and network activities of manufacturing firms: Conceptual considerations and empirical evidence from the metropolitan region of Vienna," ERSA conference papers ersa98p123, European Regional Science Association.
    3. Marjolein Caniëls & Henny Romijn, 2003. "SME Clusters, Acquisition of Technological Capabilities and Development: Concepts, Practice and Policy Lessons," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 3(3), pages 187-210, September.
    4. Mincheol Choi & Chang‐Yang Lee, 2020. "The Peter Pan syndrome for small and medium‐sized enterprises: Evidence from Korean manufacturing firms," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 41(3), pages 426-445, April.
    5. Symeonidis, George, 2001. "Price Competition, Innovation and Profitability: Theory and UK Evidence," CEPR Discussion Papers 2816, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    6. Marion Frenz & Martha Prevezer, 2010. "The impact of technological regimes on patterns of sustained and sporadic innovation activities in UK industries," Working Papers 33, Queen Mary, University of London, School of Business and Management, Centre for Globalisation Research.
    7. Marjolein C. J. Caniëls & Henny A. Romijn, 2005. "What drives innovativeness in industrial clusters? Transcending the debate," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 29(4), pages 497-515, July.
    8. Baptista, Rui & Swann, Peter, 1998. "Do firms in clusters innovate more?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 27(5), pages 525-540, September.
    9. Elisa Giuliani & Martin Bell, 2004. "When Micro Shapes the Meso: Learning Networks in a Chilean Wine Cluster," SPRU Working Paper Series 115, SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex Business School.
    10. Olsen, Jane & Lee, Boon-Chye & Hodgkinson, Ann, 2006. "Innovation in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises: A Study of Businesses in New South Wales, Australia," Economics Working Papers wp06-04, School of Economics, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia.
    11. Becker, Wolfgang & Dietz, Jurgen, 2004. "R&D cooperation and innovation activities of firms--evidence for the German manufacturing industry," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 209-223, March.
    12. Schwartz, Michael & Hornych, Christoph, 2010. "Informal networking: An overview of the literature and an agenda for future research," Jena Contributions to Economic Research 2010,1, Ernst-Abbe-Hochschule Jena – University of Applied Sciences, Department of Business Administration.
    13. Mark Knell, 2021. "The digital revolution and digitalized network society," Review of Evolutionary Political Economy, Springer, vol. 2(1), pages 9-25, April.
    14. Harabi, Najib, 1997. "Vertical Relations Between Firms and Innovation: An Empirical Investigation of German Firms," ZEW Discussion Papers 97-10, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    15. Giuliani, Elisa & Bell, Martin, 2005. "The micro-determinants of meso-level learning and innovation: evidence from a Chilean wine cluster," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 47-68, February.
    16. Fischer, Manfred M. & Varga, Attila, 2002. "Technological Innovation and Interfirm Cooperation. An exploratory analysis using survey data from manufacturing firms in the metropolitan region of Vienna," MPRA Paper 77808, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Daniele Schilirò, 2007. "Knowledge, Learning, Networks and Performance of Firms in Knowledge-Based Economies," CRANEC - Working Papers del Centro di Ricerche in Analisi economica e sviluppo economico internazionale crn0702, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Centro di Ricerche in Analisi economica e sviluppo economico internazionale (CRANEC).
    18. Schwartz, Michael, 2006. "Die Learning Economy aus Netzwerkperspektive: Mechanismen und Probleme," Jena Contributions to Economic Research 2006,4, Ernst-Abbe-Hochschule Jena – University of Applied Sciences, Department of Business Administration.
    19. Rui Baptista, 1999. "The Diffusion of Process Innovations: A Selective Review," International Journal of the Economics of Business, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 6(1), pages 107-129.
    20. Gomez, Georgina M. & Helmsing, A.H.J., 2008. "Selective Spatial Closure and Local Economic Development: What Do We Learn from the Argentine Local Currency Systems?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 36(11), pages 2489-2511, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    small and medium enterprises; public policy; government intervention; networks;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:uow:depec1:wp03-18. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Siminski (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deuowau.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.