The evaluation of industrial policy interventions has attracted increasing policy and academic attention in recent years. Despite the widespread consensus regarding the need for evaluation, the issue of how to evaluate, and the associated methodological considerations, continue to be issues of...

The provision of advisory support to small firms is almost ubiquitous in OECD countries, although it is organised in different ways and is justified on slightly different grounds. In England publicly supported advisory services are provided through the Business Link (BL) network. Here, we...

One of the key policy objectives of government at national and regional level, is to overcome the constraints preventing local industry achieving greater competitiveness in the international marketplace. This paper examines the impact of grant assistance to Northern Ireland small firms delivered...

The authors use VAT data to shed light on the pattern of variation in business birth rates across the local authority areas of the United Kingdom. They seek to provide policymakers with a more realistic assessment of the extent to which their interventions might be able to affect the rate of...

In this paper we are concerned with the nature and extent of product and process innovation and adoption of information and communications technologies (ICTs) in manufacturing plants and SMEs. The paper is based on extensive postal surveys conducted in southeast (SE) England, Northern Ireland...

Recent developments in statistical methodology have facilitated international innovation comparisons. These, however, inevitably reflect both the industrial structure of the underlying economies, and the innovativeness of firms within each element of the industrial structure. The authors...

Both Ireland and Israel have, over the last three decades, established internationally competitive electronics industries. Israeli electronics has its origins in locally initiated R&D, is dominated by indigenously owned firms, and has its main export-market strengths in the research-intensive...