nep-ent New Economics Papers
on Entrepreneurship
Issue of 2006‒05‒13
eight papers chosen by
Marcus Dejardin
Facultes Universitaires Notre-Dame de la Paix

  1. Entrepreneurship, Growth and Restructuring By David B. Audretsch; Max Keilbach
  2. Hispanic Self-Employment: A Dynamic Analysis of Business Ownership By Magnus Lofstrom; Chunbei Wang
  3. Educational Qualification, Work Status and Entrepreneurship in Italy: an Exploratory Analysis By Fabio Sabatini
  4. The Causes and Consequences of Venture Capital Financing. An Analysis based on a Sample of Italian Firms By Diana Marina Del COlle,; Paolo Finaldi Russo; Andrea Generale
  5. Does Venture Capital Investment Really Require Spatial Proximity? An Empirical Investigation By Michael Fritsch; Dirk Schilder
  6. Entrepreneurship, Inherited Control and Firm Performance in Italian SMEs By Marco CUCCULELLI; Giacinto MICUCCI
  7. The Impact of Entry and Competition by Open Source Software on Innovation By Bitzer, Jürgen; Schröder, Philipp J.H.
  8. INNOVATION ACTIVITIES EXPLAINED BY FIRM ATTRIBUTES AND LOCATION By Johansson, Börje; Lööf, Hans

  1. By: David B. Audretsch; Max Keilbach
    Date: 2006–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:esi:egpdis:2006-13&r=ent
  2. By: Magnus Lofstrom (University of Texas at Dallas and IZA Bonn); Chunbei Wang (University of Texas at Dallas)
    Abstract: This paper analyzes causes of the low self-employment rates among Hispanics, which are nearly half of non-Hispanic white self-employment rates. Relatively little is known of the reason for the lower entrepreneurship rates among Hispanics, the fastest growing ethnic group in the U.S. The paper analyzes the self-employment gap by studying self-employment entry and exits, which determine the observed self-employment rates, utilizing nationally representative longitudinal data, the 1996 panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). The data reveals differences between Mexican-Hispanics and Hispanics not of Mexican descent, referred to as Other-Hispanics. While Mexican-Hispanics are less likely to enter self-employment, relative to whites, Other-Hispanics are more likely to start a business. The differences however, are relatively small but shown to be meaningful in explaining the white-Hispanic self-employment rate gap. The data show large differences in business survival rates between Hispanics and whites. Mexican-Hispanics are almost twice as likely to exit business ownership in a year compared to whites. Our results indicate that differences in education and financial wealth are important factors in explaining differences in entrepreneurship across groups. We also show that the lower self-employment entry rates among Mexican-Hispanics is due to lower entry rates into business ownership of firms in relatively high barrier industries. In fact, Hispanics are more likely to start-up a business in a low barrier industry than whites. Differences in the industry composition across groups is also discussed and analyzed as a determinant of differences in business survival rates.
    Keywords: self-employment, entrepreneurship, Hispanic
    JEL: J15 J23
    Date: 2006–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp2101&r=ent
  3. By: Fabio Sabatini
    Abstract: This paper provides an exploratory analysis on the relationship between educational qualification and work status in Italy, with a particular focus on entrepreneurs and self-employed workers. Rough data are drawn from four waves (1995, 1998, 2002, and 2004) of the Survey of Household Income and Wealth (SHIW) carried out by the Bank of Italy. Stylised facts emerging from the empirical evidence are the surprisingly low level of educational qualification exhibited by employers and the tendency of workers holding higher levels of educational qualification not to chose to undertake an entrepreneurial activity. Such workers generally become members of the arts and professions, or take up a career as high-level employees.
    Keywords: Education, Work status, Employment, Self-employment, Entrepreneurship, Human capital
    JEL: I21 J23 J24 M13
    Date: 2006–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sap:spesar:02&r=ent
  4. By: Diana Marina Del COlle, (Bank of Italy,Research Department, Turin Branch); Paolo Finaldi Russo (Bank of Italy, Economic Research Department, Rome); Andrea Generale (Bank of Italy, Economic Research Department, Rome)
    Abstract: The analysis of the determinants and the effects on firm performance of venture capital finance for a sample of Italian enterprises indicates that small, young and more innovative firms are more likely to be financed by a venture capitalist. Our results confirm that venture capital can help reduce financial constraints for firms that are more difficult for external investors to evaluate. We also show that larger firms resort to venture capitalists when their indebtedness with banks is high and we find evidence that venture capital financing is more frequent after periods of high growth and investment, a result that points to the advisory role of the venture capitalist. A novel result emerges; venture capital also finances firms with multiple banking relationships. In the presence of multiple lending, banks could have greater difficulty monitoring firms with asymmetric information; moreover, if firms default, banks are likely to have a weaker bargaining position. In these cases, the amount of bank credit is probably near its limit and firms need to resort to venture capital, a contract that reduces the amount of guarantees needed to access external finance.
    Keywords: Venture capital, Private equity
    JEL: G24 G32
    Date: 2006–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bdi:wptemi:td_584_06&r=ent
  5. By: Michael Fritsch; Dirk Schilder
    Abstract: We examine the role of spatial proximity for Venture Capital (VC) investments in Germany. The main database is a survey of 85 personal interviews with representatives of different types of financial institutions. The analysis shows that spatial proximity is far less important for VC investments than is often believed. For example, the results indicate that syndication is partly used as an alternative to spatial proximity. Telecommunication does not work as a substitute for face-to-face contact. On the whole, regional proximity is not a dominant factor in VC partnerships. Therefore, the absence of VC firms in a region does not appear to cause a severe regional equity gap.
    Keywords: Venture Capital, spatial proximity, start-up financing
    JEL: G24 O16 D21 M13 R12
    Date: 2006–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:esi:egpdis:2006-14&r=ent
  6. By: Marco CUCCULELLI (Universita' Politecnica delle Marche, Dipartimento di Management ed Organizzazione Aziendale); Giacinto MICUCCI (Banca d'Italia - Ancona)
    Abstract: Despite the pervasive presence of family business worldwide, especially among small and medium sized companies, nearly all past studies on family founder succession have focused on large, public companies. We evaluate the issue of the inherited firm control on performance in an economic setting with a large presence of small- and medium-sized private firms run as family businesses. Our paper contributes to the existing literature in three ways.;The first concerns the sample characteristics. By focusing on the transfer of business in private SMEs, our study helps to fill a gap in the existing literature that is largely concerned with public companies listed in official market. We set up a unique dataset by matching two different data sources: firstly, a cross-sectional survey dataset collected directly from more than 3,500 companies by means of a questionnaire and, secondly, a company account dataset drawn from Cerved. We merge survey data with balance sheet data in order to perform the econometric analysis. The article's second contribution is related to the effect on performance caused by the transfer of business within the family. Our major results show i) a founder effect in the Italian manufacturing industry and ii) a large drop in the post-succession performance in family-run businesses. Finally, we provide new evidence on the relationship between pre-succession firm (and industry) characteristics and past succession performance.;By using a performance-based control group matching method to control for the effect of a pure mean reverting process in firm performance, we show that the observed large drop in the post-succession company performance is attributable to good performing companies, especially when operating in highly competitive industries.
    Keywords: SMEs governance, entrepreneurship, inherited control, matching control group, mean revision
    JEL: G32 G34 M13
    Date: 2006–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anc:wpaper:258&r=ent
  7. By: Bitzer, Jürgen (Free University, Berlin); Schröder, Philipp J.H. (Department of Organisation and Management, Aarhus School of Business)
    Abstract: No abstract
    Keywords: No keywords;
    Date: 2005–12–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhb:aardom:2005_012&r=ent
  8. By: Johansson, Börje (CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies, Royal Institute of Technology); Lööf, Hans (CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies, Royal Institute of Technology)
    Abstract: This paper examines systematically the importance of location versus a vector of firm attributes on firms’ innovation engagements. The various factors that can influence a firm’s innovation efforts are divided into (i) firm location, reflecting the regional milieu, and (ii) firm attributes such as corporate structure, nature of the knowledge production, type of industry and a set of specific firm characteristics. The study is based on information about 2, 094 individual Swedish firms, where a firm may be non-affiliated or belong to a group (multi-firm enterprise), domestically or foreign owned. The study concludes that the propensity to be innovative differs between the five macro-region investigated. Among innovative firms, however, the R&D intensity as well as most other innovation-activity characteristics remain invariant with regard to location, when controlling for the skill composition, physical capital intensity, industry, corporate structure firm, size and market extension
    Keywords: Functional regions; innovation systems; corporate structure; R&D
    JEL: C21 G34 L22 O33
    Date: 2006–05–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:cesisp:0063&r=ent

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