Date of Submission

Spring 2014

Academic Programs and Concentrations

Economics

Project Advisor 1

James Felkerson

Abstract/Artist's Statement

Small businesses have historically been the driver of job creation in the United States economy. During the Global Financial Crisis, small firms were hit disproportionately hard, resulting in a hampered labor sector that has still not fully recovered. Due to the strong role that small firms have played in creating past jobs, combined with the observed slow recovery of the labor markets, it is relevant to ask what (if at all anything) this implies? This paper explores this question in further depth and reveals some interesting findings. Most importantly, the policy responses to this financial crisis were primarily supply-side oriented. Based on this observation, I take a theoretical approach to show that demand-oriented policy would have been a more effective recovery method. This, I argue is based on the belief that the most important goal for small firms is to make sales (not to cut costs through tax incentives, or to expand through having access to credit).

Open Access Agreement

On-Campus only

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

This work is protected by a Creative Commons license. Any use not permitted under that license is prohibited.

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