摘要：It has become accepted wisdom today that "the role of creating jobs has moved from big companies to small business and the self-employed" (Globe and Mail 1996a). Probably the ultimate source of the accepted wisdom can be traced back to Birch's work in the late 1970's, in which he reported that 66% of net new jobs created in the US economy between 1969 and 1976 were generated by firms with less than 20 employees (Birch 1979). This result did not go unquestioned. A study commissioned by the US Small Business Administration for the 1978-1980 period found that firms of 100 employees or less only created 38% of all jobs: the same period was subsequently analysed by Birch using the same data, who obtained a figure of 70%! (Giaoutzi et al. 1988). Storey and Johnson (1987) examined these conflicting results and reported that the difference stemmed from the different treatment of firms not included in the data base: in their view, 50% of new jobs were created by companies of less than 100 employees over the period covered, while the latter employed only 38% of the labour force
