Marc CowlingOxford Brookes University · Business School
Marc Cowling
PhD Business Economics, Warwick Business School
I have moved institutions to Oxford Brookes business school.
About
183
Publications
62,306
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
6,996
Citations
Introduction
Researching into the potential effects of the Covid-19 lockdown on liquidity issues in small businesses which may cause a significant increase in business closure.
Additional affiliations
Education
January 2006 - January 2009
October 2000 - June 2002
Publications
Publications (183)
The concept of the ‘discouraged’ borrower is well documented. In this paper, we consider whether smaller firms in the UK who have been previously rejected for bank loans have been scarred by the experience so badly that even in the presence of two exceptionally generous Covid-19 loan guarantee schemes, they still refuse to make an application. Furt...
In 2012, the UK government made the decision to offer loans to new entrepreneurs who were excluded from the credit market through the start-up loan (SUL) scheme. By 2021, loans totalling £759 million have been issued to 85,809 new start-ups. A disproportionate share of these SULs was issued to previously unemployed people to support their transitio...
The economic consequences of COVID-19 were severe with restricted economic activity generating a liquidity crisis for many firms. To address the systemic impact of this liquidity shock, governments around the world rapidly introduced a range of loan guarantee schemes. In the UK, more than 1 million businesses accessed these schemes. Using a novel,...
Purpose
Since introducing the UK start-up loan (SUL) Scheme in 2012, 82,809 new start-ups have been supported with loans totalling £759m. Even during the Covid-19 crisis, new business start-ups supported by SUL did not abate. The authors ask whether the entrepreneurs starting businesses during the Covid-19 crisis were different from those becoming...
We know a lot about how much firms invest in R&D, but less about the critical first step which is a potential R&D opportunity. We use a large UK survey and detailed case study evidence to establish the chain of events from opportunity to the investment choice. Our results show that 34% of firms had identified an R&D investment opportunity. Realised...
This paper investigates the survival of entrepreneurial firms during the pandemic period. Specifically, we focus on UK companies that received equity finance during their developmental stages before the onset of Covid-19. The equity finance investors in our study include venture capital and growth finance funds (both domestic and foreign), crowd fu...
As the world goes digital, many companies have found that their performance improves when they digitize their operations. This is especially true in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, as companies must rely more on digital tools to survive. Our paper aims to examine the connection between digital competitiveness and the financial performance of 86 dig...
This research contributes to the state of knowledge on gender aspects of entrepreneurship and SME-promoting policies from the perspective of the United Kingdom. In this paper, we draw upon the largest public policy intervention aimed explicitly at fostering new business start-ups, the Start-Up Loan (SUL) scheme. Since its inception in 2012 until th...
Recent research has identified a key subset of the business population that comprises firms who had sought external finance but subsequently withdrew from the credit market completely despite still requiring finance. Utilising the UK’s Longitudinal Small Business Survey between 2015 and 2020, we identify the consequences in terms of lost jobs and s...
In this paper we focus on the patterns of insolvency in the covid period, and the early outcomes of the loan guarantee schemes. Firstly, analysis of insolvent exits shows that the Covid-related pandemic is different from the previous crises in that the number of insolvencies decreased. Secondly, our multivariate analysis confirmed that the pattern...
Recent research into the gender aspects of small business financing has shown that in crisis periods, banks actively reward female entrepreneurs with privileged access to loans because they put forward more realistic and cautious funding proposals compared to hubristic male entrepreneurs. We build on this research by considering in greater detail h...
Using data between 2009 and 2020, we provide a detailed description of the borrowers within the Enterprise Finance Guarantee (EFG) loan portfolio, analyse time to default and how it differs across lender types. For limited companies, we match additional financial and non-financial data from public and proprietary databases and profile the character...
This paper investigates the intertemporal dynamics of borrower discouragement. Using a cross‐country panel of firms that were resurveyed across the waves of the Survey on Access to Finance of Enterprises, we find that the probability of transitioning into discouragement changes over the business cycle and across bank financing products: term loans...
In 2012, the UK government made the decision to offer loans to new entrepreneurs who were excluded from the credit market through the start-up loan (SUL) scheme. By 2021, loans totalling £759 million have been issued to 85,809 new start-ups. A disproportionate share of these SULs was issued to previously unemployed people to support their transitio...
Entry to export markets can stimulate business growth, yet remarkably few small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) pursue export strategies. Using data gathered from the UK Small Business Surveys and a theoretical framework that combines principles from the resource-based view of the firm with notions of “investment readiness” and “managerial cap...
The scale of the UK government's response to the Covid-19 crisis after the first lockdown in March 2020 was unprecedented. For the business sector, two financing schemes were particularly relevant: the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS) and the Bounce Back Loan Scheme (BBLS). Both were designed to support the capitalization of bu...
The UK has had a commitment to loan guarantee schemes since 1981 when it introduced the Small Firms Loan Guarantee (SFLG) scheme to address access to debt finance issues for smaller firms. Over the last 40 years, its support has been unwavering, and in the Covid-19 crisis, it once again turned to loan guarantees as a means of supporting smaller fir...
Purpose
Using ethnicity as our point of focus, the authors consider the dynamics of the demand for bank loans, and the willingness of banks to supply them, as the UK economy entered the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 with a particular focus on potential behavioural differences on the demand-side and discrimination on the supply-side. In doing so w...
Clean technology (cleantech) is becoming increasingly important as firms and industries seek to address challenges around the global scarcity of resources and also achieve wider social and environmental goals. Yet there are underlying problems with how capital markets respond to this increasing demand for new and innovative cleantech investments. I...
In this commentary, we trace the economic and spatial consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic in terms of potential business failure and the associated job losses across the 100 largest cities and towns in the United Kingdom (UK). The article draws on UK survey data of 1500 firms of different size classes examining levels of firm-level precautionary...
It is well documented that the self-employed experience higher levels of happiness than waged employees even when their incomes are lower. Given the UK government’s asymmetric treatment of waged workers and the self-employed, we use a unique Covid-19 period data set which covers the months leading up to the March lockdown and the months just after...
Business angels (BAs) - high net worth individuals who provide informal risk capital to firms - are seen as important providers of entrepreneurial finance. Theory and conventional wisdom suggest that the need for face-to-face interaction will ensure angels will have a strong predilection for local investments. We empirically test this assumption us...
Using gender as a theoretical framework, we analyse the dynamics of bank lending to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME) in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis. Using six waves of the SME Finance Monitor survey, we apply a formal Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition to test whether gender impacts upon the supply and demand for debt finan...
Many different theories that have attempted to explain why smaller entrepreneurial firms exist. Surprisingly, very little empirical work has tested the obvious questions, such as: Are small firm’s price-takers in highly competitive markets? Who do they compete against? What if they try to raise prices? Does innovation offer niche market protection?...
The belief that more general capital constraints are exacerbated and magnified in innovative and technology-based firms has provided justification for policy intervention, across the range of equity and debt-based financial instruments. In this article, we tackle the question as to whether smaller innovative firms, both in and outside of high-tech...
As COVID-19 spreads across the globe, a common public policy response has been to enforce the temporary closure of non-essential business activity. In some countries, governments have underwritten a proportion of the wage income for staff forced to furlough or broadened their welfare systems to accommodate newly laid off workers or small business o...
Freelance solo self-employed have played a transformative role in economies over the last two decades. They have grown in number in the labour market in most developed economies and enabled firms to use new business and workforce models. In this special issue, we present a selection of research which explains and provides new insights into this phe...
The most dynamic economies in the world are characterised by an entrepreneurial, innovation-driven business sector. And this requires firms to unburden themselves from bureaucratic constraints and become more agile and flexible. A key, and hitherto ignored, agent in this transformative process is the freelancer. Historically considered as displaced...
Despite the growing recognition that freelancers or temporary contract workers are increasingly being used by organisations to enable them to become more dynamic and innovative, there is a lack of research exploring the extent and manner in which freelancers create value-added and affect net job change for employees. Most analyses view freelancers...
This commentary explores the manner in which the current COVID-19 crisis is affecting key sources of entrepreneurial finance in the United Kingdom. We posit that the unique relational nature of entrepreneurial finance may make it highly susceptible to such a shock owing to the need for face-to-face interaction between investors and entrepreneurs. T...
Access to finance is a key constraint on the creation, survival, and growth of SMEs, and this issue has prompted governments to directly intervene in financial markets, but has also led to the development of new forms of financial intermediation and new players in the market encouraged by a desire to increase competition in the market. Today these...
Access to inexpensive short-term credit from banks is vital for many small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which face liquidity problems because of an imbalance between cash outflows and receipt of outstanding payments. This article investigates the key determinants of short-term credit access and pricing for UK SMEs, disentangling between regional...
I have a fully funded PhD studentship available to conduct a study into:
Understanding business investment and under-investment
• This new research aims to develop a better understanding of why business demand for finance is low, how businesses make their' financing decisions, and what impact financial decision-making has on business investment.
This summary presents findings from qualitative research into the experience of self-employment for individuals with disabilities and health conditions – particularly the challenges experienced, and the types of support required to set-up, sustain and grow their business. Most individuals and support organisations felt that it was more common for d...
After 26 years of growth, the Australian economy is beginning to show signs of stress and declining productivity. In this paper, we consider aspects of productive efficiency using an Australian business population data set. Using a production function approach, several key findings are uncovered. Firstly, decreasing returns to scale are identified...
Europe has become increasingly entrepreneurial over the last generation with a substantial rise in the numbers of working people choosing an entrepreneurial career path. This dynamic reflects longer-term changes in the nature of work itself and profound changes in the composition of the labour force. In this paper we consider two basic research que...
In this paper we use a large UK survey of business angels (BAs) investing in two different publicly supported schemes to directly question the role that investment motivations play in shaping investors’ appetite for risk. We dive deeper into the relationship between investment reasons and risk taking, by exploring the potential for a moderating eff...
This editorial introduces the papers addressing regional and spatial aspects relating to the demand for, and the supply of, finance for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and start-ups. Reflecting the breadth of financial instruments that are potentially available to SMEs and new ventures (e.g., business angel, bank credit and credit card fi...
Market entry decisions are complex and involve high sunk costs with uncertain or risky outcomes. In this study we explore how owner, firm, and competitive pressures shape this decision. Using a large UK data set of SMEs, we find that the preferred form of growth, and growth is not always desired, is expansion in existing markets. Key determinants o...
The University of Brighton is part of the South Coast Doctoral Partnership and has a number of funded PhD opportunities across the social sciences.
This paper examines the relationships between firm age and entrepreneurs experience on SME performance after the 2008/09 global financial crisis. We find that in general the crisis had a long-lasting scarring effect on the SME sector, but there is evidence of some recovery in performance. Interestingly, the well-established, and negative, firm age-...
Loan guarantee schemes have existed since 1953 (in the US) and are widely used throughout the world to provide financial support to smaller firms by guaranteeing loans from commercial banks. The UK government has been an active supporter of loan guarantees since 1981, and has a long track record of modifying its scheme to reflect changing market co...
In this paper, we study the determinants of the spread charged by banks under a UK policy intervention scheme, aimed at supporting access to the credit market for small firms through guarantee backed loans. We exploit a unique dataset containing data on 29,266 guarantee backed loans under the UK SFLG scheme over the period 2000 to 2005. Results sug...
High-technology firms per se are perceived to be more risky than other, more conventional, firms. It follows that financial institutions will take this into account when designing loan contracts, and that this will manifest itself in more costly debt. In this paper we empirically test whether the provision of a government loan guarantee fundamental...
Purpose
The creation and distribution of human capital, often termed talent, has been recognised in economic geography as an important factor in the locational decisions of firms (Florida, 2002), and at a more general level as a key driver of economic growth (Romer, 1990). The purpose of this paper is to consider how talent is created and distribut...
The availability of credit to entrepreneurs with good investment opportunities is an important facilitator of economic growth. Under normal economic conditions, most entrepreneurs who requested loans receive them. In a global financial crisis, popular opinion is that banks are severely restricting lending to smaller businesses. This assumes that lo...
This report looks at aspects of competition in SME lending markets and how this impacts on access to, and cost of, credit. The UK is compared to banking systems in the US, Germany, and Italy in terms of whether different banking structures and systems generate different outcomes for SMEs.
This paper considers the impact of non-founder human capital on high-tech firms' long-run growth and survival. Drawing upon threshold theory, we explore how lack of access to complementary skills at different points in the life course impacts founders' thresholds for exit. We examine these factors using a unique longitudinal dataset tracking the pe...
Drawing on a survey of 500 UK small business owner-managers, the study develops a typology of innovative SMEs. Examined factors include firm size, firm growth, owner-managers? expectation, export behaviour, and their perceived barriers to export in relation to their capabilities including products/services, business plan, knowledge, resources. Exte...
This article investigates whether high-growth firms grow in different ways from other firms. Specifically, we analyze how firms grow along several dimensions (growth of sales, employment, assets, and operating profits) using Structural Vector Autoregressions. Causal relations are identified by using information contained in the (non-Gaussian) growt...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how entrepreneurs demand for external finance changed as the economy continued to be mired in its third and fourth years of the global financial crisis (GFC) and whether or not external finance has become more difficult to access as the recession progressed.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a la...
The UK Government introduced tax credits for SMEs to promote and support R&D in 2000. Since then the policy has become more generous in this respect, particularly since 2008. In this paper, we use the National Systems of Entrepreneurship as a conceptual framework in which to question whether SMEs take-up of tax credits has actually led to an increa...
We draw on elements of several established theories of internationalization to provide a framework for exploring international market entry and scale of entry measured by number of foreign markets entered for a sample of young, high-tech, firms from the UK and Germany. We find that founding team human capital is associated with more extensive inter...
This paper examines the different theories that have been developed in economics and innovation management to explain the causal chain of events through which entrepreneurs can deliver more innovation and ultimately higher growth for the benefits of the regional and national economies and identifies the key firm-based factors that lead to survival...
Drawing on a cross-sectional survey of 5,723 UK SMEs, this paper examines the challenges and barriers perceived by owner-managers to exporting. The paper will contribute to developing our understanding of the barriers to exporting by analyzing the relative importance of firm-related factors, resource endowments, entrepreneurial intentions and innov...
Exporting presents an opportunity for SMEs to secure growth as they expand their activities into international markets. But there are also significant sunk costs associated with this strategic decision which are non-recoverable. In this paper we empirically examine what shapes the firms? decision to internationalise and question whether firms with...
1. INTRODUCTION - STUDY AIMS AND SCOPE
This document contains the Final Report in respect of the study "Assessing the Potential for EU Investment in Venture Capital and Other Risk Capital Funds-of-Funds”2. The assignment was carried out by the Centre for Strategy & Evaluation Services (“CSES”) and Oxford Research, supported by Panteia and New Front...
Despite the importance of high-technology firms to the global economy, relatively little is known about factors contributing to these firms' long-run growth. We examine these factors using a unique longitudinal dataset combining two waves of detailed surveys of 345 UK high-tech firms with performance data from UK official datasets. Overall we concl...
This study uses UK data to consider how small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)1 coped during the recent financial crisis. This is important, as SMEs are major contributors to job creation, but are vulnerable to falling demand. It finds that 4 in 10 SMEs experienced a fall in employment during the recession, and 5 in 10 experienced a fall in sale...
An investigation of quantitive and qualitative methodologies to evaluate a Swedish public programme providing venture capital to entrepreneurs in the regions via a co-investment fund structure.
This report was requested by Tillväxtanalys - The Swedish Agency for Growth Policy Analysis (Growth Analysis) from the four academic researchers it had invited to advise it on the formulation of a rigorous evaluation process and methodology for the Swedish Regional VC Co-Investment Funds Programme (CIF). It is important to understand that the four...
This article concerns rates of wage growth among women and minority groups and their impact on pay gaps. Specifically, it focuses on the pay progression of people with more than one disadvantaged identity, and on the impact of merit pay. Recent research indicates that pay gaps for people in more than one disadvantaged identity category are wider th...
Support for small businesses is often delivered separately for urban and rural areas, based on the idea that the barriers to business growth differ geographically. Yet firms in rural and urban areas will also differ in their characteristics, and these may be more important influences on firm growth than location. In this paper we test whether firms...