Suchergebnisse

The research on women entrepreneurship has mainly studied these topics: i) the characteristics and motivations (Brush and Hisrich, 1991; Pablo-Martí et al., 2014), ii) the strategic choice (Verheul et al., 2008), iii) the role of leadership (Schwartz, 1976; Justo et al. 2006)), iv) the entry barriers (Brush and Gatewood, 2008), mainly access to funding (Klapper and Parker, 2010), and v) the performance and achieved results (Coleman and Robb, 2009; Díaz and Jiménez, 2010; Crespo-Espert et al., 2012). These topics have been well studied. However, further research on this field is required. The long period of crisis from 2007 on has changed some of the findings related to these issues. This is especially significant in the most affected economies such as those of the southern countries of the EU. In these countries the severity of the crisis has had significant consequences for the productive sector (destruction of companies, high unemployment, credit restrictions) and on public finances under severe uncertainty (sovereign debt crisis, banking crisis). This is generating major changes in productive activity and business competitiveness, which is associated with the deleveraging of companies, as well as the varying prevalence of smaller companies (SMEs) in the economies. In this context, it may be hypothesized that the progress and results of activities led by women entrepreneurs had significant changes between the period before the crisis and the current stage of uncertain recovery. In this paper we analysed the dynamics and evolution of entrepreneurial activity of women in Spain in the period 2003-2013. It includes a stage of strong expansion and other recessive. Also, the research focuses on the differences found in two of the topics listed above: a) the obstacles in accessing to funding and b) the results of businesses women-owned compared to those of male-owned businesses. We made use of the SABI database. It includes information from the commercial registers. It has over one million companies with employees that represent most of the Spanish companies. The samples for this study differentiate whether the company is owned by a man or a woman. These samples are representative for company sizes, sectors and regions. Thus the results that adopt a regional approach can be segmented for a better understanding of the different types of women's businesses. The variables of the study are some financial indicators: credit ratio, debt ratio, productivity, EBITDA over assets, EBITDA over turnover, economic profitability and financial profitability. We employ various dummies to control for differences in size, sector and location of firms. The results allow understanding the different behaviour of women entrepreneurs and its reasons. They can also serve to develop new entrepreneurship policies related to gender in economic recovery.

In the expansionary phase of the economy (1995-2007) and, particularly after the Euro introduction, credit to the business sector increased significantly in Europe. According to surveys of the EC-Flash Eurobarometer (2005), over 77% of SMEs claimed to have appropriate funding levels. A number of EU Member States (inside and outside the Eurozone) even showed values near 90%: Finland, Ireland, Denmark and the UK. 85% of Spanish companies had a sufficient funding level in that year. Others, such as Sweden and Germany, were 77% and 73% respectively. These data suggest that at this stage of the business cycle the traditional credit constraint faced by SMEs (Vohrl and Adams, 1997; EU 2011; Callejón and Segarra, 2012), would have been at least partially overcome, since most of these companies had access to abundant and cheap credit. The conditions of bank credit changed due to the lasting decline in interest rates, economic growth and low inflation. Moreover, it is well known that since 2009 these companies are suffering financial constraints more significant in a set of countries than in others (ECB-Survey on the access to finance of SMEs in the euro area, 2011). The question this paper raises is whether this easy access to credit has led to improved productivity and competitiveness through an increase in long-term productive investment. Or, on the contrary, it was not used to increase the size of enterprises and the technological effort and therefore to internationalize their business investment. The work, which takes a regional approach to capture territorial differences, focuses on the Spanish economy, examining the evolution and behaviour of SMEs from the perspective of international / export commitment in the decade from 2003 to 2012. Outcomes and evidence on the origin and depth of the crisis are extracted from a panel data of companies (Amadeus-SABI data base) and making use of financial indicators and econometric techniques. This provides guidance on the Spanish production model and the importance of focusing policies and incentives on business credit.

Purpose
– Academic research has endeavoured to understand women's behaviours in entrepreneurial activity, identifying the differences when compared to men. The main topics analysed show similar findings in relation to characteristics and motivations, leadership style, strategic choice, obstacles and results. This paper delves further into these differences by examining the personal characteristics of entrepreneurs, the motivation to enter the activity and the performance of their enterprises. The paper aims to discuss these issues.


Design/methodology/approach
– The authors study Spanish entrepreneurial activity using a survey carried out in 2009 of 608 randomly selected entrepreneurs. The main methods used are descriptive analyses and logistic estimations.


Findings
– There were two groups of entrepreneurial women with different profiles and results: the first group comprises a variety of sectors reflecting the economy's average; and the second mainly operates in those sectors traditionally considered as female. Male and female reasons for success and survival are found to be substantially the same, but personal characteristics and motivations were found to be different. Among the differences found, it is worth highlighting the amount of time devoted by entrepreneurial women to household chores, the higher proportion of women in the staff they employ, and their commitment to product and service innovation.


Social implications
– The findings point to some ideas in terms of policies regarding entrepreneurial activity and gender. The women's greater commitment to innovation in goods and services suggests new approaches in policies aimed at promoting the entry of women in entrepreneurial activity.


Originality/value
– The main findings of the paper are consistent with relevant existing literatures, but the results offer new insights that contribute to improving the knowledge of the dynamics of entrepreneurial women.

At present, Spain faces one of the key moments in planning the future design of the infrastructure network. As a consequence of the critical role played by haulage in intra-European trade, the most important investments are those that guarantee that road haulage traffic can move freely at the borders. That is why it is necessary to make serious evaluations of the economic and social profitability of these investments. Normally the most significant social benefit of investment projects in transport infrastructure is time saving, which in turn changes traffic intensity. In this article we analyse the changes in the user excess caused by public investment in transport infrastructure planned by the Spanish government and which will be located on the border between Spain and France. In particular, we study the increase in network user surplus for HGV traffic in the Spanish and French border zones in the Pyrenees.