Measuring the Costs and Coverage of SME and Entrepreneurship Policy: A Pioneering Study

Abstract

This paper documents a methodology used to assess, for the first time, the costs to the taxpayer of small and medium enterprise (SME) and entrepreneurship policy in Sweden. It then uses that data to compare the resulting expenditure patterns with the focus of policy as expressed by experts. It finds important areas where the two diverge, implying a possible mismatch between expenditure priorities and political rhetoric. This approach is then extended beyond Sweden to include Poland, Austria, and the Flanders region of Belgium to demonstrate the application of the approach to other countries and regions.

Developing and governing entrepreneurial ecosystems: the structure of entrepreneurial support programs in Edinburgh, Scotland

“…The main method governments have to support entrepreneurial development and the creation of entrepreneurial ecosystems is initiatives to train entrepreneurs, provide financing, or supply other resources they require (Lundstrom and Stevenson, 2006). However, there has been little direct research on the role of governance public policy in entrepreneurial ecosystems.…”

The social profitability of business incubators: a measurement proposal

“…Doubts arise about whether incubators are just another expense of public administrations or, if on the contrary, they constitute a source of social profitability (Pergelova and Angulo-Ruiz 2014). Although there are studies analysing the profitability of the entrepreneurship policy in general (Lundström et al, 2014) and the results of business incubators in particular (Hackett and Dilts, 2008;Voisey et al, 2006), it is still necessary to continue measuring the results of investment in business incubators.…”

Contexts of enterprise policy-making – an institutional perspective

“…Some have also pointed out that governments' expenditure on enterprise policies is higher than what it is normally spent on education or police (i.e. Lundstrom et al 2014). …”

“…The institutional development of a country (Boettke and Coyne 2003) and the social structures in which entrepreneurship is embedded (Davidsson 2003;Baker, Gedajlovic, and Lubatkin 2005) provide clues to the different entrepreneurial trajectories unfolding in diverse contexts (Garud, Gehman, and Giuliani 2014). Governments have a major influence on the conditions under which enterprise develops, and scholars, both in the developed and developing countries, have argued for the need to ensure there is a good fit between policies and the actual entrepreneurial environment (Minniti 2008;Heinonen, Hytti, and Cooney 2010;Lundstrom et al 2014). This has often translated into calls for, or attempts from scholars, to take into account contextual differences in explaining policy outcomes (Parker 2008;Xheneti and Kitching 2011;Mason and Brown 2013;Smallbone, Welter, and Ateljevic 2014;Acs, Autio, and Szerb 2014).…”

“…The theorisation of enterprise policy formulation is only recent (Arshed, Mason and Carter 2014), as most studies of enterprise policy rely on functional assumptions to entrepreneurship (for an extensive critical review see, for example, Perren and Jennings 2005;Orge 2013), or on increasingly evaluating individual policy programmes and their impact (Norrman and Bager-Sjogren 2010;Niska and Vesala 2013) or government expenditure on enterprise policy (Lundstrom et al 2014). …”