Research on SME public policies has greatly evolved during the past years. This is the case particularly in developed countries, where many institutions have been put in place to support these firms owing notably to their social and economic importance. Yet, the scientific community acknowledges that we still have substantial knowledge gaps with regards to the question of how and when governments should intervene to assist SMEs, and which specific categories of SMEs should receive assistance in some shape or form. The objective of this thesis is to bring an element of response to the above-mentioned question concerning public financing measures in particular. More precisely, its objective is to show how the type of measures used by governments and the internal characteristics of beneficiary firms contribute to make government intervention more or less effective in the short term (over a one-year interval) notably in terms of job creation. The interest of this thesis thus lies in the fact that it highlights new parameters which can be used in the framework of strategies aiming at improving the results of government intervention in the SME sector. The measures we examine include research and development subsidies, capital interventions, and loans. The characteristics of firms we consider include the level of cash-flow, the level of equity, and the level of financial debt. To achieve our objective, we focus on the context of the Brussels-capital Region in Belgium and consider 2004-2010 as the period of study. The thesis is principally inspired by Storey’s propositions (one of the pioneers of research on entrepreneurship and public policies), who posits that setting effective SME policies requires an understanding of factors influencing the birth, the growth, and the death of the latter. It uses the comparative and longitudinal approaches in a quasi-experimental research design with the relative difference-in-differences estimation and panel-data regression including dummy variables as techniques of analysis. The thesis is presented in five chapters. The first is devoted to the general introduction, in which we delineate the framework of the study. The second reviews the literature on the foundations and evaluation methods of SME policies. It gives the state of the art of current research on the topic addressed and defines the background of the thesis. The third chapter describes the methodology used to answer the research question. The fourth chapter is devoted to the results, which are presented through two empirical studies. The first empirical study analyzes the influence of the type of measures. It reveals that subsidies are on average more effective than the two other forms of financing followed respectively by loans, and capital interventions. The second empirical study analyzes the simultaneous influence of the type of measures and the characteristics of beneficiary firms. It shows that public measures are in general more effective in categories of firms having a relatively-high level of cash-flow, a relatively-high level of equity, or a relatively-low level of debt than in the other categories of firms. This result means that a high level of cash-flow as a high level of equity and a low level of debt have a positive effect on the expected outcomes of government intervention in the SME sector. Finally, chapter 5 presents the general conclusion. In this chapter, we summarize the main points developed; present the limitations of the thesis and the perspectives for future research. / La recherche sur les politiques publiques visant à soutenir les PME s’est fortement développée au cours de ces dernières années. C’est le cas en particulier dans les pays développés, où de nombreuses institutions ont été mises en place pour soutenir ces entreprises en raison notamment de leur importance socio-économique. Pourtant, la communauté scientifique s’accorde sur le fait que nous ayons toujours des gaps de connaissance substantiels concernant la question du comment et quand les pouvoirs publics devraient intervenir pour assister les PME (ou les entrepreneurs), et quelles catégories spécifiques de PME devraient recevoir de l’aide sous une forme quelconque. Cette thèse essaye d’apporter un élément de réponse à la question susmentionnée en prenant le cas particulier des mesures publiques de financement. Son objectif est de montrer comment le type de mesure utilisé par les pouvoirs publics et les caractéristiques internes des entreprises bénéficiaires contribuent à rendre l’intervention publique plus ou moins efficaces dans le court terme (sur un intervalle d’un an) notamment en termes de création d’emplois. Ainsi, l’intérêt de cette thèse réside dans le fait qu’elle met en évidence de nouveaux paramètres ou facteurs qui peuvent être utilisés dans le cadre des stratégies visant à optimiser les résultats de l’intervention publique dans le secteur des PME. Les mesures que nous examinons incluent les subsides à la recherche développement, les interventions en capital, et les prêts. Les caractéristiques des entreprises que nous considérons comprennent le niveau de cash-flow, le niveau des capitaux propres, et le niveau de la dette financière à plus d’un an. Pour atteindre notre objectif, nous nous focalisons sur le contexte de la Région de Bruxelles-capitale en Belgique et considérons la période 2004-2010 comme période d’étude. La thèse s’inspire principalement des travaux de Storey (un des pionniers de la recherche sur l’entrepreneuriat et les politiques publiques), qui soutient que la mise en place de politiques efficaces dans le secteur des PME nécessite une compréhension et une prise en compte des facteurs concourant à la naissance, la croissance, et la faillite de ces entreprises. Elle utilise les approches comparative et longitudinale, dans un design de recherche quasi-expérimental avec l’estimation par différence-en-différences relative et la régression avec des données de panel incluant les variables dummy comme techniques d’analyse. La thèse est présentée en cinq chapitres. Le premier chapitre porte sur l’introduction générale, qui délimite le cadre général de la thèse. Le second passe en revue la littérature et ressort les fondements et méthodes d’évaluation des politiques visant à soutenir les PME. Il fait un état de l’art de la recherche actuelle sur le sujet abordé et définit le cadre théorique de la thèse. Le troisième chapitre présente la méthodologie utilisée pour répondre à la question de recherche. Le quatrième chapitre est consacré aux résultats, qui sont présentés à travers deux études empiriques. La première étude empirique analyse l’influence du type. Elle révèle que les subsides sont en moyenne plus efficaces que les deux autres formes de financement, suivis par les prêts, et le capital respectivement. La deuxième étude empirique analyse l’influence simultanée du type de mesure et des caractéristiques des entreprises bénéficiaires. Elle montre que les mesures publiques sont en général plus efficaces chez les catégories entreprises présentant un niveau de cash-flow relativement élevé, un montant de capitaux propres relativement élevé, et un niveau d’endettement relativement faible. Ces résultats indiquent ainsi qu’un niveau de cash-flow élevé de même qu’un niveau de capitaux propres élevé et un niveau d’endettement faible contribuent à rendre les mesures publiques plus efficaces. Pour finir, le chapitre 5 présente la conclusion générale. Dans ce chapitre, nous résumons les principaux point développés, et présentons les limites de la thèse ainsi que les perspectives pour la recherche future. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The main idea of this thesis is to study three different issues, economic, political, or financial, related to three different public infrastructure sectors, transport, water and sewerage, and electricity, by using three different methodological approaches. In the first chapter, I make creative use of a non-parametric technique traditionally used to measure the relative efficiency of a set of similar firms, data envelopment analysis, to identify the most likely objective, economic vs. political, behind a specific policy. In the second chapter I empirically investigate the effects of the increasing private financial ownership of the water and sewerage utilities in England and Wales on key outcome variables such as leverage levels and consumer bills. Finally, in the third chapter, I evaluate an equity-aimed policy introduced in the electricity sector in Spain in 2009 by measuring the effect of its introduction on the probability of a household of being energy poor.Chapter One – Unbundling political and economic rationality: a non-parametric approach tested on transport infrastructure in SpainThis paper suggests a simple quantitative method to assess the extent to which public investment decisions are dominated by political or economic motivations. The true motivation can be identified by modeling each policy goal as the focus of the optimization anchoring a data envelopment analysis of the efficiency of the observed implementation. In other words, we rank performance based on how far observed behavior is under each possible goal, and the goal for which the distance is smaller reveals the specific motivation of the investment or any policy decision for that matter. Traditionally, data envelopment analysis is used to measure the relative efficiency of a set of firms having a similar productive structure. In this case, each firm corresponds to a different policy year, the policy being the determinant of the investment made.The approach is tested on Spain’s land transport infrastructure policy since it is argued by many observers to be driven more by political than economic concerns, resulting in a mismatch between capacity investment and traffic demand. History has shown that when the source of financing has been private, the network has been developed in areas with high demand, i.e. the Northern and Mediterranean corridors. When the source has been public, the network has been developed following a radial pattern, converging from a to Madrid. The method clearly shows that public investments in land transport infrastructure have generally been more consistent with a political objective – the centralization of economic power – than with an economic objective – maximizing mobility –.Chapter Two – On the effects of the private financial ownership of regulated utilities: lessons from the UK water sectorThis paper analyzes the quantitative impact of the growing role of non-traditional financial actors in the financing structure and consumer pricing of regulated private utilities. The focus is on the water sector in England and Wales, where the effect of the firms’ corporate financing and ownership strategies on key outcome variables may have been underestimated. The sector was privatized in 1989, year in which the 10 regional monopolies became 10 water and sewerage companies, listed and publicly traded on UK Stock Exchanges. Since then, six of the ten have been de-listed, bought-out by private equity – investment and infrastructure funds. I make use of this variation in ownership to measure the effect on leverage levels and consumer bills.I develop a theoretical framework allowing me to derive two hypotheses: first, the buyout of a company increases its leverage level, and second, the buyout of a company increases the consumer bill through higher leverage levels. The empirical analysis is based on two sequential steps: a staggered difference-in-differences estimation shows that private equity buyouts increase the leverage levels of water utilities. An instrumental variable and two-stage least squares estimation then show that these higher leverage levels increase the average consumer bills of bought-out utilities more than if they had not been bought-out. The estimated impact of the private equity buyouts in the sector in England and Wales on the annual average consumer bill ranges from 13.5 to 32.6 GBP, for a sample average bill of about 427 GBP.Chapter Three – Understanding the effectiveness of the electricity social rate in reducing energy poverty in SpainThis paper analyzes the causal impact of the introduction of a social subsidy, the bono social de electricidad, in Spain's electricity market in 2009. The measure was introduced following the surge in energy poverty, increasing particularly after the financial crisis. Using data from the family budget survey from 2006 to 2017, we evaluate the social policy in its fight against energy poverty.We proceed in two steps. First, we use a difference-in-differences approach to measure such a causal impact and to analyze how the introduction of the measure directly affected eligible households. We find that the introduction of the subsidy has reduced the likelihood of energy poverty for the eligible households. Therefore, the bono social de electricidad has reached its equity objective of increasing affordability of electricity. The second step aims at understanding how specifically the introduction of the subsidy affects consumers. We find that, in reaction to lower effective prices, households do not increase their consumption of electricity, resulting in lower total electricity expenditure. We are therefore able to show that this policy did not induce a change in the consumption behavior and that the increased affordability entirely resulted in a decrease of expenditure in electricity / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Using public support as the baseline, the aim of the Ph.D. thesis is firstly to assess its effectiveness in alleviating firms’ financing constraints (Chapter 2) and in enhancing the innovation-growth linkage (Chapter 5), in comparison with other financing sources. Secondly, the research undertaken also explores public policy effectiveness in two periods of time: ex-ante and ex-post analysis. In the former, effectiveness is assessed according to whether the characteristics of the project selected for the subsidy are in line with the policy targets (Chapter 3). In turn, the ex-post analysis assesses firms’ effectiveness in achieving the planned goal and the sustainability of the achieved outcomes (Chapter 4). Chapter 2 provides evidence that, in addition to a guarantee for loans, measures to facilitate equity investments and making existing public measures easier to obtain could be considered as the main solutions for future financing. Tax incentives for financially constrained firms are revealed to be the least important factor. Chapter 3 aims to understand which kinds of projects are selected for an innovation subsidy and if the characteristics of the project selected are in line with the policy target. The results show the selection process seems to be particularly effective in meeting the goals as regards the amount of investment, as well as the expected effect on enhanced internationalization and productivity. Nevertheless, the study also reveals some failures in the selection process, namely in terms of the intensity of the project’s contribution to growth. Chapter 4 assess firm performance after project implementation. Results show that subsidized firms reached targets linked with employment level and sales more easily than labour productivity and value creation. Chapter 5 reveals that equity financing has a greater effect on the strategic decision to innovate and the highest output additionality on firm turnover growth. Grants have a more moderate effect on innovation and firm growth (both turnover and employment). / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This dissertation empirically studies the interplay of government policies, finance, and economic development. More specifically, it considers the impact of corporate taxes on employment, of bank regulation on financial information sharing on banking stability and of banking crises on democracy. Two of the chapters focus on Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. The third one takes a more global perspective. Chapter 1 evaluates the impact of corporate income tax rates (CIT) on employment at the firm level for a sample of SSA countries. It finds that on average, firms employ more workers in countries with higher CIT rates. This is consistent with the fact that corporate tax revenues allow governments to provide public goods and infrastructure which are crucial to firm activities. We report estimation results to support this assumption. More specifically, while the marginal effect of CIT decreases with income level or with government expenditures, it increases with the level of democracy. Furthermore, we also find that the effect of CIT rates on employment works partially through improvements in the business environment in which firms operate. Chapter 2 assesses the effects of government policies setting the extent to which credit information on the credit history of borrowers is shared among lenders. It shows that credit information sharing stabilizes banks. Moreover, despite foreign banks having an informational disadvantage over domestic banks due to information frictions and would hence benefit more from credit information sharing, the results indicate that both types of banks are affected in the same way. This suggests that foreign banks rely on alternative strategies to compensate for their informational disadvantage in local markets. Lastly, Chapter 3 documents the impact of banking crises on the level of democracy. It provides evidence that democracy improves in the 10-year window following the occurrence of a banking crisis. The results also highlight the presence of several non-linearities. First, severe banking crises have larger effects on democracy than moderate ones. Second, the positive effect of banking crises on democracy is mostly driven by non-democratic countries. Finally, the bulk of the effect materializes from the third year after the crisis occurred. / Cette thèse étudie empiriquement l'interaction des politiques gouvernementales, de la finance, et du développement économique. Plus précisément, il examine l'impact de la fiscalité des entreprises sur l'emploi, de la réglementation bancaire relative au partage d'informations sur le crédit sur la stabilité bancaire, et des crises bancaires sur la démocratie. Les deux premiers chapitres se focalisent sur les pays d'Afrique subsaharienne. Le troisième adopte une perspective plus globale pour couvrir. Le premier chapitre évalue l'impact des taux d'imposition des sociétés (IS) sur l'emploi au niveau de l'entreprise pour un échantillon de pays d'Afrique subsaharienne. Ses résultats montrent qu'en moyenne, les entreprises emploient plus de travailleurs dans les pays où les taux de taxation des entreprises sont plus élevés. Cela s’explique par le fait que les recettes de l'impôt sur les sociétés permettent aux gouvernements de financer des biens publics et des infrastructures qui sont essentiels aux activités des entreprises. Nous présentons des résultats d'estimation pour soutenir cette hypothèse. Plus précisément, alors que l'effet marginal de l'IS diminue avec le niveau de revenu ou avec les dépenses publiques, il augmente avec le niveau de démocratie. En outre, nous constatons également que l'effet des taux d'IS sur l'emploi s'explique en partie par l'amélioration de l'environnement des affaires dans lequel opèrent les entreprises. Le second chapitre évalue les effets des politiques gouvernementales fixant la mesure dans laquelle les informations sur les antécédents de crédit des emprunteurs sont partagées entre les prêteurs. Il montre que le partage d'informations sur le crédit permet de stabiliser les banques. De plus, bien que les banques étrangères aient un désavantage informationnel par rapport aux banques nationales en raison de frictions d'information et bénéficieraient donc davantage du partage d'informations sur le crédit, les résultats indiquent que les deux types de banques sont affectées de la même manière. Cela suggère que les banques étrangères s'appuient sur des stratégies alternatives pour compenser leur désavantage informationnel sur les marchés locaux. Enfin, le chapitre 3 documente l'impact des crises bancaires sur le niveau de démocratie. Il fournit la preuve que la démocratie s'améliore dans la fenêtre de 10 ans suivant l’occurrence d'une crise bancaire. Les résultats mettent également en évidence la présence de plusieurs non-linéarités. Premièrement, les crises bancaires graves ont des effets plus importants sur la démocratie que les crises modérées. Deuxièmement, l'effet positif des crises bancaires sur la démocratie est principalement attribuable aux pays non démocratiques. Pour finir, l'essentiel de l'effet se matérialise à partir de la troisième année après la survenance de la crise. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished