Entrepreneurship is essential to job creation and to productivity growth and therefore is an important matter for government policy. However, policymakers face a difficult challenge because successful growth for a few firms-which cannot easily be identified in advance-is accompanied by...

Start-ups are seen as the leading force in dynamically growing economies. Limited financing opportunities often prevent entrepreneurs from realizing their innovative business ideas or taking growth opportunities. However, in the context of the technological revolution, a fundamental change in...

This EIF Working Paper investigates financing patterns of European SMEs by looking at a large number of different financing instruments and their complementary and substitutive effects, using the SAFE dataset collected in 2015. We develop an empirical taxonomy of SME financing patterns in...

The objective of this paper is to examine and analyze the differences between Venture Capital development in Macedonia and several Central and Eastern Europe countries, to determine the reasons, and hence extract certain conclusions that will serve as a guideline in Macedonia's venture capital...

In recent times, venture capital (VC) financing has evolved as an alternative feasible funding model for young innovative companies. Existing studies focus on whether VC enhances profitability. While helpful, this body of work does not address a critical question: whether VC firms are more...

Peer-to-business lending refers to online platforms facilitating loans from individuals to smalland medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). We conjecture that easy-to-understand risk ratings conveyed by the platform play a pronounced role in influencing the borrowing success of SMEs and that more...