Small entities — including small businesses, small and local governments and small non- profits — saved $7 billion in first-year costs and $745 million in annual recurring expenses, thanks to the SBA’s Office of Advocacy in its role as enforcer of the Regulatory Flexibility Act (Reg Flex). That’s the big take-away in the Obama Administration’s [...]

Back in June, President Obama nominated Dr. Winslow Sargeant to the position of Chief Counsel of the SBA Office of Advocacy. As the MEJ reported at the time, this was also something of a mystery appointment. Traditionally, Advocacy’s Chief Counsel has been appointed from the ranks of the legal profession, which makes sense in the [...]

Course work in entrepreneurship is becoming more and more commonplace on college campuses but, so far, little attention has been paid to the question of whether entrepreneurship education is effective. So, researchers from the Berkley Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at the Stern School of Business and the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, [...]

Last week, the SBA Office of Advocacy released a compendium of research on small businesses and access to capital, a topic very much in the forefront of small business policy makers over the last ten months. The research consists of four papers, released under the single and easy to understand title Small Business in Focus: [...]

Earlier this month, President Obama quietly fingered Winslow Sargeant, another venture capitalist, to head up the SBA Office of Advocacy. If confirmed, Sargeant will be moving into the position from Venture Investors LLC, a Madison, WI-based venture firm specializing in health and IT investments. He has been with Venture Investors for four years. Prior to [...]

Family firms that are open to outside management are more likely to engage in internationalization (i.e., export activity) than closed family firms. This unsurprising finding was the overall result of a research study released by the SBA Office of Advocacy last week. It is possible that the most interesting thing about the paper is its [...]

Last week, the SBA Office of Advocacy released its report on Regulatory Flexibility Act enforcement and compliance for fiscal 2008, the last such report detailing the results achieved under former Chief Counsel Tom Sullivan. The report includes updated information on federal agency compliance with the Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA) and E.O. 13272, agency compliance with [...]

The SBA Office of Advocacy announced last week that it had received thirty-eight nominations of burdensome regulations during the second round of its Regulatory Review and Reform (r3) initiative. That’s quite a drop from the first round, during which there were 83 nominations - more than double this year’s turnout. That almost certainly had to [...]

The pace of growth in the population of U.S. businesses slowed significantly in 2006, according to new firm size data released by the SBA Office of Advocacy last week. After growing by approximately 4% in 2004 and 2005, the number of U.S. businesses increased by only 1.6% in 2006. And it appears from the data, [...]

“The U.S. economy experienced weaknesses in the third quarter, as real gross domestic product fell 0.3 percent.” Thus begins the SBA Office of Advocacy’s quarterly economic report, didactically entitled Third Quarter 2008: The Economy and Small Business. This was not among the most aesthetically pleasing of these reports; the red ink flowed liberally with news [...]