Benefit Measurement for Small Business Assistance: A Further Note on Research and Data Collection
探讨了小企业援助项目效益衡量中主要效益与次要效益的区分，通过案例说明为何应聚焦于主要效益加非抵消性次要效益，以改进数据收集和研究。
Two conflicting articles in the Journal of Small Business Management (Wood 1994; Chrisman and McMullan 1996) have dealt with measuring the benefits of small business assistance programs. Although the articles appear to be diametrically opposed on most points, they both suggest a common agenda in research and data collection to refine the estimates of these benefits. This article examines the exchange between these two approaches and explores the implications for small business researchers and policymakers. Much of the conflict concerned a distinction that cost-benefit analysts make between primary benefits and secondary benefits of a program (Sassone and Schaffer 1978; Anderson and Settle 1977). Applying this distinction to small business assistance, primary benefits are the net benefits of the assistance program itself to clients. Secondary benefits include the gains in employment or revenue to clients, if those gains are new to the economy. The main points at issue in the exchange are whether to focus on primary or secondary benefits, and when to count secondary benefits as real net gains for the economy. Secondary benefits can be quite real. As just one example, when an assisted client makes new export sales, the revenues are new to the economy. These new sales benefit the economy beyond the primary benefit to the client. Counting only the domestic benefit of the assistance without adding the export sales would miss the substantial secondary benefit. Secondary benefits can also be illusory. If an assisted client won a government contract that would otherwise have been issued to a different firm, then the assistance is not properly credited for creating the contract - although the primary benefits obtained in getting the contract remain appropriate to count. Where the Wood and Chrisman-McMullan articles differ the most is in their assumptions about the origin of small business clients' increased revenues. Chrisman and McMullan, in the tradition of small business evaluation, favor counting revenue gains as net benefits, generally assuming that clients' increased sales are new to the economy. In the cost-benefit analysis literature cited by Wood, clients' increased sales are not assumed to be new to the economy, except in a narrowly defined set of instances. Defining Cases The following cases help define the challenge to data collection and research that is posed by the distinction between primary and secondary benefits: Case 1. A small business assistance program provides exporting advice at no charge, advice which is valued by the client at $5,000. Because of the advice, the client then increases export sales by $500,000 and no sales are lost by any domestic company. Case 2. A small business assistance program provides marketing advice at no charge, advice which is valued by the client at $5,000. Because of the advice, the client then increases sales by $500,000, entirely from sales that otherwise would have gone to a competitor. In this case there are no new sales on net. Case 3. A sham small business assistance program advertises: Starting or expanding a small business? Call our toll-free line for help and consultation. When a client calls, an automated system gets the client's name and address, tells the client Buy low, sell high, and hangs up. The client values the advice at zero, shrugs in wonder, but then goes on to implement a sound business plan that increases export sales by $500,000. These three contrasting programs are very different in their true benefits, but measuring new revenues assigns the same value to all three programs. Refining the measurement of revenues generated by the client is not a solution to inaccuracy here; that would amount to more precisely estimating the wrong concept. This is why future research and data collection would be improved by concentrating on a properly constructed benefit measure: primary benefits plus any non-canceling secondary benefits. …