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Small Enterprise: Finance, Ownership and Control
Author(s) -
Hutchinson Patrick
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
international journal of management reviews
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 4.475
H-Index - 107
eISSN - 1468-2370
pISSN - 1460-8545
DOI - 10.1111/1468-2370.00018
Subject(s) - transaction cost , control (management) , information asymmetry , agency cost , economics , finance , capital market , principal–agent problem , agency (philosophy) , database transaction , capital (architecture) , business , corporate governance , history , philosophy , management , archaeology , epistemology , computer science , shareholder , programming language
Finance, ownership and control issues have received a great deal of attention in recent years as centres of interest in the ‘new institutional economics’. Much of the debate has been fuelled by the inability of neoclassical economics to explain the continued existence, and increasing importance, of small enterprises. Developments in agency theory, information asymmetry and signalling theory, and transaction cost economics are identified as contributing to a new approach. The concepts distilled from a review of these developments are then used in the analyses of well‐known phenomena involving small enterprises. These include capital structure and access to capital markets featuring the finance gap, the underpricing of new issues and the small firm effect. In addition, going private, by means of management buy‐outs, and franchising are examined. It is seen that the economic literature on finance, ownership and control helps to explain both the advantages and disadvantages of small enterprises. Their continued existence is seen as being due to a trade‐off of various costs and benefits.