Firm level empirical research on the impact of financing decisions on small business performance is scarce in the Australian context. This study adopts an instrument variable （IV） approach to analyze the impact of f...Firm level empirical research on the impact of financing decisions on small business performance is scarce in the Australian context. This study adopts an instrument variable （IV） approach to analyze the impact of financing decisions, in particular, equity or debt are obtained, on the performance of small businesses by using the panel data from Australian Bureau of Statistics （ABS） Business Longitudinal Database （BLD） 2004-2005, 2005-2006, and 2006-2007. Performance variables, i.e., sales and expenditure, are used as dependent variables. Equity and debt obtained are used as independent variables （or known as treatments）. IV includes size of the business, age of the business, number of locations, and industry division etc.. The results from IV modeling outperformed those obtained from OLS （Ordinary Least Squares）. Findings include： （1） financing has significantly positive impacts on the performance of small businesses in Australia; （2） equity and debt financing are used as alternatives, comparatively, equity financing is preferred; （3） capital purchases are largely funded by debt financing, while non-capital purchases and salary expenses are funded by equity financing; and （4） equity financing is more often used by firms with increasing capital purchases and declining non-capital purchases, while debt financing is used by firms with the opposite trends. The paper concludes with a discussion of the limitations of this research and future research＇s directions.展开更多
文摘Firm level empirical research on the impact of financing decisions on small business performance is scarce in the Australian context. This study adopts an instrument variable （IV） approach to analyze the impact of financing decisions, in particular, equity or debt are obtained, on the performance of small businesses by using the panel data from Australian Bureau of Statistics （ABS） Business Longitudinal Database （BLD） 2004-2005, 2005-2006, and 2006-2007. Performance variables, i.e., sales and expenditure, are used as dependent variables. Equity and debt obtained are used as independent variables （or known as treatments）. IV includes size of the business, age of the business, number of locations, and industry division etc.. The results from IV modeling outperformed those obtained from OLS （Ordinary Least Squares）. Findings include： （1） financing has significantly positive impacts on the performance of small businesses in Australia; （2） equity and debt financing are used as alternatives, comparatively, equity financing is preferred; （3） capital purchases are largely funded by debt financing, while non-capital purchases and salary expenses are funded by equity financing; and （4） equity financing is more often used by firms with increasing capital purchases and declining non-capital purchases, while debt financing is used by firms with the opposite trends. The paper concludes with a discussion of the limitations of this research and future research＇s directions.
