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on Entrepreneurship |
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Issue of 2006‒07‒28
six papers chosen by Marcus Dejardin Facultes Universitaires Notre-Dame de la Paix |
| By: | Martin Valdivia (Grupo de Analisis para el Dessarrollo); Dean Karlan (Economic Growth Center, Yale University) |
| Abstract: | Can one teach entrepreneurship, or is it a fixed personal characteristic? Most academic and policy discussion on microentrepreneurs in developing countries focuses on their access to credit, and assumes their human capital to be fixed. However, a growing number of microfinance organizations are attempting to build the human capital of micro-entrepreneurs in order to improve the livelihood of their clients and help further their mission of poverty alleviation. Using a randomized control trial, we measure the marginal impact of adding business training to a Peruvian village banking program for female microentrepreneurs. Treatment groups received thirty to sixty minute entrepreneurship training sessions during their normal weekly or monthly banking meeting over a period of one to two years. Control groups remained as they were before, meeting at the same frequency but solely for making loan and savings payments. We find that the treatment led to improved business knowledge, practices and revenues. The microfinance institution also had direct benefits through higher repayment and client retention rates. Larger effects found for those that expressed less interest in training in a baseline survey have important implications for implementing similar market-based interventions with a goal of recovering costs. |
| Keywords: | entrepreneurship, microfinance, business training, business skills, adult education |
| JEL: | C93 D12 D13 D21 I21 J24 O12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:egc:wpaper:941&r=ent |
| By: | Mari Maunula |
| Keywords: | venture capital, biotechnology |
| JEL: | G24 L65 M13 |
| Date: | 2006–07–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rif:dpaper:1030&r=ent |
| By: | Giovanni Dosi; Luigi Marengo; Corrado Pasquali |
| Abstract: | The paper attempts a critical assessment of both the theory and the empirical evidence on the role of appropriability and in particular of Intellectual Property Right (IPR) as incentives for technological innovation. We start with a critical discussion of the standard justification of the attribution of IPR in terms of "market failures" in knowledge generation. Such an approach we argue misses important features of technological knowledge and also neglects the importance of non-market institutions in the innovation process. Next, we examine the recent changes in the IPR regimes and their influence upon both rates of patenting and underlying rates of innovation. The evidence broadly suggests that, first, IPRs are not the most important device apt to "profit from innovation"; and second, they have at best no impact, or possibly even a negative impact on the underlying rates of innovation. Rather, we argued, technology- and industry-specific patterns of innovation are primarily driven by the opportunities associated with each technological paradigm. Conversely, firm-specific abilities to seize them and "profit from innovation" depend partly on adequacy of the strategic combinations identified by the taxonomy of Teece (1986) and partly on idiosyncratic capabilities embodied in the various firms. |
| Keywords: | Appropriability, Intellectual Property Right, Innovation, Technological opportunities |
| Date: | 2006–07–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ssa:lemwps:2006/17&r=ent |
| By: | Gine, Xavier; Love, Inessa |
| Abstract: | The authors study the effect of reorganization costs on the efficiency of bankruptcy laws. They develop a simple model that predicts that in a regime with high costs, the law fails to achieve the efficient outcome of liquidating unviable businesses and reorganizing viable ones. The authors test the model using the Colombian bankruptcy reform of 1999. Using data from 1,924 firms filing for bankruptcy between 1996 and 2003, they find that the pre-reform reorganization proceeding was so inefficient that it failed to separate economically viable firms from inefficient ones. In contrast, by substantially lowering reorganization costs, the reform improved the selection of viable firms into reorganization. In this sense, the new law increased the efficiency of the bankruptcy system in Colombia. |
| Keywords: | Banks & Banking Reform,Corporate Law,Small Scale Enterprise,Microfinance,Economic Theory & Research |
| Date: | 2006–07–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:3970&r=ent |
| By: | Philip Vermeulen (European Central Bank, Kaiserstrasse 29, 60311 Frankfurt am Main, Germany.) |
| Abstract: | Small firms often do not change their number of employees from year to year. This paper investigates the role of adjustment costs and indivisibility of labor in the employment stickiness of manufacturing firms with less than 75 employees. When small firms have to adjust employment in units of at least one employee, indivisibility becomes an important source of stickiness. A structural model of dynamic labor demand with adjustment costs and indivisibility is estimated using indirect inference on a panel of small French manufacturing firms. Adjustment cost are estimated to be very small. Indivisibility explains around 50% of the stickiness of employment, adjustment costs explain the other 50%. JEL Classification: E24. |
| Keywords: | Indivisibility; labor adjustment costs; employment; sticky. |
| Date: | 2006–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ecb:ecbwps:20060640&r=ent |
| By: | Morten Bennedsen; Kasper M. Nielsen; Francisco Pérez-González; Daniel Wolfenzon |
| Abstract: | This paper uses a unique dataset from Denmark to investigate the impact of family characteristics in corporate decision making and the consequences of these decisions on firm performance. We focus on the decision to appoint either a family or external chief executive officer (CEO). The paper uses variation in CEO succession decisions that result from the gender of a departing CEO’s firstborn child. This is a plausible instrumental variable (IV), as male first-child firms are more likely to pass on control to a family CEO than are female first-child firms, but the gender of the first child is unlikely to affect firms’ outcomes. We find that family successions have a large negative causal impact on firm performance: operating profitability on assets falls by at least four percentage points around CEO transitions. Our IV estimates are significantly larger than those obtained using ordinary least squares. Furthermore, we show that family-CEO underperformance is particularly large in fast-growing industries, industries with highly skilled labor force and relatively large firms. Overall, our empirical results demonstrate that professional, non-family CEOs provide extremely valuable services to the organizations they head. |
| JEL: | G32 G34 M13 |
| Date: | 2006–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12356&r=ent |