Specifically, the absence of mechanisms for managing a severe financial crisis of a euro-area Member State generated uncertainty, lengthening the timeframes involved in providing support, increasing its cost and feeding the risk of contagion. The first response to the sovereign debt crisis was necessarily of an urgent nature.
In many types of business, especially manufacturing, efficiency depends on being able to operate at optimal economies of scale. Operating at a larger scale also allows individual staff to specialise in specific tasks which raises their productivity. Secondly, mid-sized companies combine labour with capital equipment, thereby raising substantially the productivity of labour.