Abstract
This paper identifies the key determinants of spatial variability of productivity, focusing on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the service sector across England. Due to the hierarchically structured data, multilevel analysis is applied to distinguish the effects of a firm’s internal variables and (sub)regional factors on productivity. Using cross-sectional data for 10,400 SMEs from the UK government’s Small Business Survey, 2015, the results show that firm-specific determinants significantly influence productivity. The findings also indicate that location, local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) and where firms operate play a pivotal role in determining SME productivity. In particular, at the LEP level, increasing labour supply, promoting local funding and improving broadband speed potentially enhance firm productivity.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 589-602 |
| Number of pages | 14 |
| Journal | Regional Studies, Regional Science |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 9 Dec 2020 |
Bibliographical note
© 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Funder
The work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Productivity Insights Network under Grant [RES/0576/7203].Keywords
- SME Productivity
- Business Services
- LEPs
- Multilevel Analysis
- England
- multilevel analysis
- business services
- SME productivity
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Geography, Planning and Development
- Economics and Econometrics
- Sociology and Political Science