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

长期以来，英国一直饱受投资不足和生产率增长缓慢的问题之苦。这种投资和增长的缺乏限制了人们拿到多少钱，可以通过税收筹集多少钱来支付公共服务和英国人口的整体财富。在过去的50年里，英国经历了经济中小公司数量的大幅增加。因此，大约60%的劳动人口的工作、收入和福利依赖于小企业部门。自20世纪30年代以来一直存在的一大担忧是，小公司可能难以从银行获得贷款和投资者的投资。由于许多原因，我们目前对小企业对英国经济整体表现的贡献，特别是它们获得融资的能力如何影响它们对生产率的贡献的了解，存在着很大的差距。为了充分了解英国600万家小公司如何为经济增长做出贡献，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公司。它探讨了这些企业家如何拥有个人偏好和才能，这些偏好和才能塑造了他们公司的运营方式，并探索了可能导致生产率提高的增长的新投资的潜在机会。当小公司有机会投资时，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筹集资金的领域。其他人则寻求外债，通常是银行贷款，但遭到拒绝。其他人获得了银行贷款，但只得到了他们所要求的金额的一小部分。所有这些情景都可能导致在提高生产率的增长方面投资不足。这项研究项目追溯了从小型创业公司到他们的投资机会和资金选择的整个过程，然后研究这个过程如何、何时和在哪里导致生产率增长。该项目非常详细地探讨了事件链，并涵盖了所有投资机会和潜在的资金来源。这包括研究银行债务、政府担保贷款、“P2P”贷款、另类贷款机构，金融科技说，一直到更复杂的股权融资。这一广泛的概述使该项目能够在事件因果链的每一步确定哪些类型的公司在进入下一阶段时面临最大障碍，最终导致新的投资和生产率的增长。这一系列事件的具体焦点将是：(A)区域和地点、(B)不同规模的公司、(C)不同年龄的公司、(D)按行业划分的差异和(E)创新模式。该项目为小企业获取投资资本和提高生产率所面临的问题构建了一幅微妙的图景，这将为政策制定者和企业本身提供证据，以支持互惠互利和协调一致的应对措施，以解决这些问题，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.