| Přispěvatelé: |
Giovanni Schiuma, Paoloni, Mauro, Tutino, Marco, Mattei, Giorgia, Paoloni, Niccolo', Santolamazza, Valentina |
| Popis: |
The agri-food supply chain includes all activities relevant to the production, processing, distribution and marketing of food products and it is based on small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which are generally characterized by more difficulties in accessing finance (Birley and Niktari, 1995; Larsen and Lewis, 2007) than big firms. This industry must face the increased demand that is caused by the population growing (European Parliament, 2019), which will result in a persistent development of the performance through an innovation process. Nevertheless, if on one hand, the implementation of new technologies is useful to increase efficiency, on the other hand, it needs to be supported by adequate financing sources. The agriculture and food sectors have historically been supported by banks, but, in the actual context, after the banks’ consolidation in the 1990s and the financial crisis in 2008, there are many restrictions for these instruments (Nassr and Wehinger, 2015) which could compromise this innovation process. For this reason, nowadays, the scenario has sensibly changed and the use of alternative sources of financing, such as crowdfunding and venture/angel capitalists (Klerx, 2015), has constantly increased (Mondelli, 2012). The present study wants to provide a brief analysis of the SMEs and their difficulties in accessing finance, trying to find new solutions to support innovation and this is done through an analysis of the agri-food sector in Italy. This sector is characterized by growing performance in both agriculture and food and beverage industries (ISTAT, 2019a, ISTAT, 2019b) and by the huge presence of SMEs. For this reason, it can be considered a clear example of this changing situation. The analysis is done on a sample of 351 Italian firms, whose financial structure is examined to highlight the change in the use of financial sources. The findings suggest that this change is happening since the number of firms with a D/E ratio higher than 1 are increasing in the period analyzed (2013-2018) and, in general, firms are changing their financial structure, reducing Debt and increasing Equity, probably because of the credit crunch (Nassr and Wehinger, 2015). Considering the relevance of this industry in Italy, the value of the paper is to highlight the necessity to change the financial structure of the firms belonging to this sector because of the credit crunch and illustrate how it can be done. Limitations may concern the discretional choice of the indicators considered in the analysis. |
