The Economic Trends, Challenges and Behaviour of Small Businesses in Australia

Small businesses make an important contribution to the Australian economy. They account for the vast majority of the active private businesses in the country and represent a large share of employment and value added. Small businesses, however, face many operational challenges and, as a consequence, typically have higher failure rates than larger businesses. While these features have been noted in previous literature, there has been little work examining how these challenges affect the business decisions of small businesses relative to those of larger businesses.