Small Business Enterprise

Using up-to-date statistical and econometric techniques, this book discusses the role of small business enterprise in a mature market economy and evaluates the real behaviour of small firms in a contemporary competitive environment.
This book is concerned with one of the major contemporary issues of industrial organization: the role of small business enterprise in a mature market economy. Key issues covered are start-up and its financial features; static and dynamic scale economies; enterprise case histories; small business strategy; competitive forces; strategic pricing policy; determinants of growth and survival; and the political economy of fair trade and enterprise. The treatment is analytical and empirical, well grounded in business reality, and set within the context of the political economy of small business. It is based on a unique and extensive database of small business enterprise, containing over 40,000 data points gathered by fieldwork within the firm. The book starts with a section on the database and then applies diverse methods; statistical analysis; enterprise and case histories; econometrics; and political economy. In this way, a picture of the modern small business emerges, it is viewed from different perspectives.