Understanding how constraints on access to finance and under-investment impact on productivity growth in smaller firms

长期以来，英国一直存在投资不足和生产率增长缓慢的问题。缺乏投资和增长限制了人们的收入，限制了可以通过税收筹集多少钱来支付公共服务，限制了英国人口的总体财富。在过去的50年里，英国经历了小企业数量的大幅增长。因此，约60%的劳动人口依靠小企业部门获得工作、收入和福祉。自上世纪30年代以来一直存在的一个大问题是，小企业可能难以从银行获得贷款，也难以从投资者那里获得投资。由于许多原因，我们目前对小型企业对英国经济整体表现的贡献的认识存在重大差距，特别是他们获得融资的能力如何影响他们对生产力的贡献。为了充分了解英国600万小企业对经济增长的贡献，该项目帮助研究人员更多地了解由企业家拥有和管理的小企业。它探讨了这些企业家的个人偏好和才能如何影响他们的公司运营方式，并探索了可能导致生产率提高的新投资的潜在机会。当小企业有机会投资时，它就面临着如何为这些新投资提供资金的选择。许多小公司非常不喜欢外部融资，并选择将投资限制在他们可以从自己的资源中获得资金的项目上。其他人寻求外债，通常是银行贷款，但被拒绝了。还有一些人得到了银行贷款，但只得到了他们要求的一小部分。所有这些情况都可能导致对生产率促进增长的投资不足。本研究项目追溯了从小型创业公司到他们的投资机会和融资选择的整个过程，然后研究这个过程如何、何时、何地导致生产率增长。该项目非常详细地探讨了事件链，涵盖了所有的投资机会和潜在的资金来源。这包括银行债务、政府担保贷款、p2p贷款、另类贷款机构、金融科技，以及更复杂的股权融资。这种广泛的概览使项目能够在事件因果链的每一步建立，哪种类型的公司面临着进入下一阶段的最大障碍，最终以新的投资和生产力增长而告终。在这一系列事件中，具体的重点将是确定(a)地区和地点的差异，(b)不同规模的公司，(c)不同年龄的公司，(d)行业的差异，以及(e)创新模式的差异。该项目对小企业在获取投资资本和提高生产率方面所面临的问题进行了细致的描绘，这将为政策制定者和企业本身提供证据，支持采取互利和协调的应对措施来解决这些问题，最终可能使600万英国小企业主及其1680万员工及其家人受益。

The UK has suffered from problems of under-investment and low productivity growth for a long time. This lack of investment and growth constraints how much money people are paid, how much money can be raised in taxes to pay for public services and the overall wealth of the UK population. The UK has experienced a large increase in the number of small firms in the economy over the last fifty years. As a result, around 60% of the working population rely on the small business sector for their jobs, incomes and well-being. A big concern, that has been around since the 1930s is that small firms may struggle to access loans from banks and investment from investors. For many reasons, there is a significant gap in our current knowledge about the contribution of smaller firms to the overall performance of the UK economy and specifically how their ability to access finance influences how they contribute to productivity. To fully understand how the 6 million small firms in the UK contribute to economic growth, this project helps researchers to understand more about small firms that are owned and managed by entrepreneurs. It explores how these entrepreneurs have personal preferences and talents that shape how their firms operate and explore potential opportunities for new investment that might lead to productivity-enhancing growth. When small firms have opportunities to invest, it then faces choices about how to fund these new investments. Many small firms have a strong dislike for external finance and choose to limit their investments to ones they can fund from their own resources. Others seek external debt, often bank loans, but are refused. Others get bank loans, but only get a fraction of the amount they requested. All of these scenarios potentially lead to an under-investment in productivity enhancing growth.This research project traces out the whole process from the small, entrepreneurial firm, to their investment opportunities and funding choices, and then examine how, when and where this process can lead to productivity growth. The project explore the chain of events in great detail and cover the full range of investment opportunities and potential sources of finance. This includes looking at bank debt, government guaranteed loans, "Peer-2-Peer" lending, Alternative Lenders, FinTech, right through to more sophisticated equity finance. This broad overview allows the project to establish, at each step in the causal chain of events, what types of firm face the greatest barriers to progression onto the next stage which ultimately end up with new investment and productivity growth. Specific points of focus within this chain of events will be on the identification of differences by (a) regions and place, (b) firms of different sizes, (c) firm of different ages, (d) differences by industry, and (e) patterns of innovation. The project builds a nuanced picture of the problems that small firms face accessing investment capital and increasing their productivity that will give policy-makers and businesses themselves the evidence to support a mutually beneficial and co-ordinated response to address these problems that may ultimately benefit the 6 million UK small business owners and their 16.8 million employees and their families.