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原文: The Economics of Small Business Finance:The Roles of Private Equity and Debt Markets in the Financial Growth Cycle The role of the entrepreneurial enterprise as an engine of economic growth has garnered considerable public attention in the 1990s. Much of this focus stems from the belief that innovation particularly in the high tech, information, and biotechnology areas is vitally dependent on a flourishing entrepreneurial sector. The spectacular success stories of panies such as Microsoft, Genentech, and Federal Express embody the sense that new venture creation is the sine qua non of future productivity gains. Other recent “phenomena have further focused public concern and awareness on small business, including the central role of entrepreneurship to the emergence of Eastern Europe, financial crises that have threatened credit availability to small business in Asia and elsewhere, and the growing use of the entrepreneurial alternative for those who have been displaced by corporate restructuring in the . Acpanying this heightened popular interest in the general area of small business has been an increased interest by policy makers, regulators, and academics in the nature and behavior of the financial markets that fund small businesses. At the core of this issue are questions about the type of financing growing panies need and receive at various stages of their growth, the nature of the private equity and debt contracts associated with this financing, and the connections and substitutability among these alternative sources of finance. Beyond this interest in the microfoundations of small business finance is a growing interest in the macroeconomic implications of small business finance. For example, the impact of the .“ credit crunch” of the early 1990s and the effect of the consolidation of the banking industry on the availability of credit to small business have also been the subject of much research over the past several years. Similarly, the “credit channels” of moary policy mechanisms through which moary policy shocks may have disproportionately large effects on small business funding has generated considerable analysis and debate. Other key issues, such as the link between the initial public offering (IPO) market and venture capital flows, prudent man rules regarding institutional investing in venture capital, and the role of small firm finance in financial system architecture are