Business Owner Characteristics

• Women Entrepreneurs — October 2010
  An update of the November 2004 article on women entrepreneurs, this article describes the recent financing activities of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) majority-owned by women in Canada. General business characteristics and financial growth performances are compared with SMEs majority-owned by men to highlight past and current gender differences.
  HTML    PDF Version (866 KB, 21 pages)
• Young Entrepreneurs — January 2006
  Canada's population is aging and a substantial number of today's entrepreneurs will soon be heading into retirement. To maintain economic growth and prosperity, it will become increasingly important that Canada's youth fill the entrepreneurial void left by the retiring baby-boom generation. Drawing on the comprehensive database of the SME Financing Data Initiative, this article provides a portrait of Canada's young entrepreneurs and examines the effect, if any, of the age of the owner on financing a small business.
  HTML    PDF Version (811 KB, 12 pages)
• Visible Minority Entrepreneurs — March 2005
  Canada's visible minority population has grown exponentially over the past 25 years. Drawing on the comprehensive database of the SME Financing Data Initiative, this article provides a portrait of visible minority entrepreneurs. It examines whether and how financing a small business is affected by the ethnicity of its owner.
  HTML    PDF Version (790 KB, 10 pages)
• Women Entrepreneurs — November 2004
  Women entrepreneurs have been the topic of many research studies throughout the last decade. These studies have predominantly focused on women entrepreneurs' access to capital, often suggesting that women lack experience and networks, that women have poor credit ratings, or that Canada's financial institutions have rigid lending policies or even inherent gender biases. Using the most comprehensive database on small business financing available through the SME Financing Data Initiative, this article examines the unique characteristics of women entrepreneurs and investigates whether these qualities influence the financing of women-owned businesses.
  HTML    PDF Version (571 KB, 11 pages)

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