Small and medium-sized enterprises and regional economic growth in Brazil

Túlio A. Cravo, Adrian Gourlay, Bettina Becker

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) sector and economic growth for an annual panel of Brazilian states for the period 1985–2004. We investigate the importance of the relative size of the SME sector measured by the share of SME employment in total formal employment and the level of human capital in SMEs measured by the average years of schooling of SME employees. The empirical results indicate that the relative importance of SMEs is negatively correlated with economic growth, a result that is consistent with previous studies examining developing countries. In addition, our results show that the human capital embodied in SMEs may be more important for economic growth than the relative size of the SME sector.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)217-230
Number of pages14
JournalSmall Business Economics
Volume38
Issue number2
Early online date12 Sept 2010
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Feb 2012

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