Part of the Office of Advocacy’s mission is to conduct, sponsor, and promote economic research that provides an environment for small business growth. This page displays a matrix of Advocacy’s research products from 2008 to 2011 and the issue areas they address, broadly framed as small business contributions, challenges, and environment.

Periodically, we present these one-pagers to focus on one specific small business issue.  These Facts enable small business champions and others to better understand the plight of small businesses.

Small firms view a vigorous anti-cartel policy as a desirable feature of a state’s law enforcement profile.

Businesses owned by veterans and by service-disabled veterans have been the subject of a special research effort by the U. S. Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy since the enactment of the Veterans Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development Act of 1999, Public Law 106-50. This report continues Advocacy’s ongoing veteran entrepreneurship research program and features data on veteran-owned businesses and their owners. The report is based on the 2007 Survey of Business Owners data released in 2011.

Advocacy’s Small Business Data Resources is a listing of online databases by federal agency or private sector source and topic. The listed databases are hotlinked to their websites and keyed to the small-business-related topics on which they provide information.

U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) is the market value of the goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States. This research takes each component of private nonfarm GDP and estimates the proportions produced by small and large businesses. This study is another installment in the series of studies sponsored by the Office of Advocacy on small businesses’ contributions to GDP, the most recent of which was published in 2007. The report finds that small businesses continue to be vital contributors to the U.S. economy, producing 46 percent of private nonfarm GDP in 2008 (the most recent year of data).

Small innovative firms are 16 times more productive than large innovative firms in terms of patents per employee, and the patents of small firms were cited 79 percent more by recent patents than is typical for other patents of the same age and patent classification. Patents for “green” products form a higher percentage of the portfolios of small firms with at least one green patent than of large firm portfolios, and green patents from small firms are cited 2.5 times as frequently as green patents from large firms.
Full Report (PDF)
Research Summary (PDF)

The primary goal of this report is to place gender in a broader perspective. Business ownership no longer can be analyzed simply on the basis of the owner’s gender; businesses owned by women and men more and more share the same general development patterns. Moreover, the strong growth of publicly held firms, which cannot be identified by the demographic characteristics of their many owners, has led to the need to focus on both privately owned and publicly held firms.

Full Report (PDF)

Research Summary (PDF)

State and national data for banks and credit unions for 1986-2010 show credit unions may have provided extra business lending in response to reductions in bank lending.

Federal regulations of all types weigh heavily on American small businesses, but the burden of complying with federal income tax requirements is of particular concern. A 2009 Congressional Research Service report notes that the burden of complying with the federal tax system represents approximately 80 percent of the overall paperwork burden imposed by the federal government.

A previous Advocacy-funded study from Corporate Research Board, High-Impact Firms: Gazelles Revisited, found that fast-growing or high-impact companies were a main contributor to new jobs. In light of the current need for a growing labor market, a natural question is how the deteriorating economy of 2008 affected high-impact companies and their jobs. This study picks up where the previous one left off, and it addresses such additional questions as the gender of the owners and the financial condition of high-impact companies.

The study,Lending by Depository Lenders to Small Businesses, 2003 to 2010, looks at small business lending in the context of an economy that has endured a deep recession and appears poised for recovery. It relies on data based on reports provided by depository institutions to their respective regulating agencies—Call Reports for June of each year from 2003 to 2010.

This study looks at workers’ access to and partici- pation in retirement plans offered by their employers using data from the 2004 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) wave, which was conducted in 2006. In particular, it examines these issues by firm size. Note that this study defines a small business as one with fewer than 100 employees.

This contract research report, Are Planners Doers? Pre-Venture Planning and the Start-Up Behaviors of Entrepreneurs in the PSED, explores the relationship of business planning to the general activity levels of nascent entrepreneurs.

The choice of business definition at the outset of research can drive results.  Pooling different kinds of businesses allows nonemployer businesses (which are numerous and small) to overwhelm employer businesses (whose numbers are far fewer, but whose business activity is many times more significant).  A scan of special tabulations from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2002 Survey of Business Owners shows that nonemployer and employer businesses differ qualitatively, as do employer firms and businesses of differing sizes.    We investigate how nonemployers and employers differ in number, receipts, industry, business turnover, survival, and ownership characteristics.  Cross-tabulations are presented for such business characteristics as number of employees, receipt size, business age, veteran ownership, home-based, franchise status, family-owned status, legal form of organization, geography, industry, and financing.

The National Survey of Small Business Finances (NSSBF) was used to empirically test the interest rate model for this study, and direct evidence of the importance of relationships was solicited from firms.

This research aims to use the empirical model developed in The Differential Impact of State-Local Tax Incentives in Small Versus Large Firms to examine the comparative impact of a federal consumption-based tax on the distribution of state and local business taxes across firm size.

This research identifies differences in foreign patenting by small and large firms by using a data set of matched pairs of small and large business patents.

This study examines several dimensions of the proposition that small businesses are treated unequally by business tax structures at the state and local levels.

The aim of this study is to review the literature to ascertain best principles and practices in technology transfer to small manufacturing firms.

Based on a rigorous research design and high quality longitudinal data, the study seeks to determine the factors that differentiate surviving franchise systems from those that cease operations.

The study (Part II) provides tabulations and analyses of health insurance and pensions by employment status and firm size, as well as economic and demographic characteristics for both wage-and-salary workers (by firm size) and the self-employed,  while Part I evaluated alternative data sources used to produce estimates of the number of uninsured by employment status and firm size (see Research Summary no. 146).

The study measured workers' compensation burden by firm size for the nation and for all states, during the period 1990 to 1992.

This study identified the types and dollar amounts of investment being made in small businesses through economically targeted investments programs from public pension funds.

The study focused on the earnings of  women who reported that they were self­employed in their own incorporated or unincorporated businesses and compares their earnings with those of self­employed men for the 1990 census year.

The research focused on four areas: (1) sources small businesses receive information from, (2) why information needed, (3) how useful was the information received, and (4) importantance to the small business owner or manager.

This research determines whether environmental regulations favor large existing manufacturers at the expense of small new manufacturers.

This study: (1) evaluates alternative data sources that can be used to produce estimates of the number of the uninsured by firm size, and (2) focuses on the March Current Population Surveys from 1988 to 1992 to obtain estimates of the insured and uninsured by firm size and economic and demographic characteristics.