IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wiw/wiwrsa/ersa99pa396.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Grant Assistance and Small Firm Development in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland

Author

Listed:
  • Roper, Stephen
  • Hewitt-Dundas, Nola

Abstract

Small business support is an important element of industrial development policy in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. This paper examines the effect of grant support on small business performance from 1991–94. Around 50% of small businesses in Northern Ireland and 30% of small businesses in the Republic of Ireland received financial support over this period. In Northern Ireland, three clusters of assisted companies were identified who received support for marketing, training and capital investments. In the Republic of Ireland, two assisted clusters of firms were identified who received marketing and training grants. In each case, firms in the assisted clusters grew faster, tended to be more profitable, were more active in terms of sales and market development and adopted more ambitious strategic directions than those in the non‐assisted clusters. Selection models are used to explore whether these differences are due to differences in the characteristics of the assisted and non‐assisted groups or can be directly attributed to the effect of government financial support. In the Republic of Ireland there is no evidence of any effective targeting of assistance at better performing firms. In Northern Ireland, there is some evidence that assistance was targeted at firms with higher productivity growth. Grant aid had no effect on either the turnover growth or profitability of small businesses in either area. It did, however, boost employment growth. This is good‐news for job creation but has potentially worrying implications for firms’ longer‐term competitive position through its negative effect on productivity.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Roper, Stephen & Hewitt-Dundas, Nola, 1999. "Grant Assistance and Small Firm Development in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland," ERSA conference papers ersa99pa396, European Regional Science Association.
  • Handle: RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa99pa396
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www-sre.wu.ac.at/ersa/ersaconfs/ersa99/Papers/a396.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Heckman, James, 2013. "Sample selection bias as a specification error," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 31(3), pages 129-137.
    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. Darima Fotheringham & Michael A. Wiles, 2023. "The effect of implementing chatbot customer service on stock returns: an event study analysis," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 51(4), pages 802-822, July.
    2. Song, Wei-Ling & Uzmanoglu, Cihan, 2016. "TARP announcement, bank health, and borrowers’ credit risk," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 22(C), pages 22-32.
    3. Raymundo M. Campos-Vázquez, 2013. "Efectos de los ingresos no reportados en el nivel y tendencia de la pobreza laboral en México," Ensayos Revista de Economia, Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon, Facultad de Economia, vol. 0(2), pages 23-54, November.
    4. Stephen Brown & William Goetzmann & Bing Liang & Christopher Schwarz, 2008. "Mandatory Disclosure and Operational Risk: Evidence from Hedge Fund Registration," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(6), pages 2785-2815, December.
    5. Paul W. Miller & Barry R. Chiswick, 2002. "Immigrant earnings: Language skills, linguistic concentrations and the business cycle," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 15(1), pages 31-57.
    6. Chul‐Woo Kwon & Peter F. Orazem & Daniel M. Otto, 2006. "Off‐farm labor supply responses to permanent and transitory farm income," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 34(1), pages 59-67, January.
    7. Jonathan Gruber & Aaron Yelowitz, 1999. "Public Health Insurance and Private Savings," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(6), pages 1249-1274, December.
    8. Jean-Louis Arcand & Linguère M'Baye, 2013. "Braving the waves: the role of time and risk preferences in illegal migration from Senegal," CERDI Working papers halshs-00855937, HAL.
    9. Sandra Müllbacher & Wolfgang Nagl, 2017. "Labour supply in Austria: an assessment of recent developments and the effects of a tax reform," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 44(3), pages 465-486, August.
    10. Campbell, Randall C. & Nagel, Gregory L., 2016. "Private information and limitations of Heckman's estimator in banking and corporate finance research," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 186-195.
    11. Leye Li & Louise Yi Lu & Dongyue Wang, 2022. "External labour market competitions and stock price crash risk: evidence from exposures to competitor CEOs’ award‐winning events," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 62(S1), pages 1421-1460, April.
    12. Jože P. Damijan & Mark Knell, 2005. "How Important Is Trade and Foreign Ownership in Closing the Technology Gap? Evidence from Estonia and Slovenia," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 141(2), pages 271-295, July.
    13. Calcagno, R. & Renneboog, L.D.R., 2004. "Capital Structure and Managerial Compensation : The Effects of Renumeration Seniority," Discussion Paper 2004-120, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    14. Nakashima, Kiyotaka & Ogawa, Toshiaki, 2020. "The Impacts of Strengthening Regulatory Surveillance on Bank Behavior: A Dynamic Analysis from Incomplete to Complete Enforcement of Capital Regulation in Microprudential Policy," MPRA Paper 99938, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Sarah Bridges & David Lawson, 2008. "Health and Labour Market Participation in Uganda," WIDER Working Paper Series DP2008-07, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    16. Ahn T. Le, 2003. "Female Labour Market Participation: Differences Between Primary and Tied Movers," Economics Discussion / Working Papers 03-17, The University of Western Australia, Department of Economics.
    17. Inmaculada Garc�a-Mainar & V�ctor M. Montuenga-G�mez, 2017. "Subjective educational mismatch and signalling in Spain," Documentos de Trabajo dt2017-03, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales, Universidad de Zaragoza.
    18. Insik Min & Jong‐Ho Kim, 2003. "Modeling Credit Card Borrowing: A Comparison of Type I and Type II Tobit Approaches," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 70(1), pages 128-143, July.
    19. Son K. Lam & Thomas E. DeCarlo & Ashish Sharma, 2019. "Salesperson ambidexterity in customer engagement: do customer base characteristics matter?," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 47(4), pages 659-680, July.
    20. Bertoli, Simone & Dequiedt, Vianney & Zenou, Yves, 2016. "Can selective immigration policies reduce migrants' quality?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 100-109.

    More about this item

    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:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa99pa396. 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: Gunther Maier (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.ersa.org .

    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.