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on Entrepreneurship |
| By: | Joern Block (Trier-University, Erasmus-University Rotterdam, University Witten/Herdecke); Miriam Gnad (Trier-University); Alexander S. Kritikos (DIW Berlin, University of Potsdam, IZA Bonn, GLO Essen, CEPA); Caroline Stiel (DIW-Berlin) |
| Abstract: | Despite substantial research on job satisfaction in self-employment, we know little about the specific consequences for the venture when job satisfaction declines after an external shock. Taking the COVID-19 pandemic as an example of an external shock and drawing on a sample of nearly 7, 000 self-employed individuals living in Germany, we investigate how declines in job satisfaction are related to investment decisions of self-employed individuals. Having separated job satisfaction into its financial and non-financial aspects, we build in our analysis on two complementary behavioral perspectives to predict how reductions in financial and non-financial job satisfaction relate to investments in venture development. Our results show that decreasing financial job satisfaction is positively related to time investments. This finding provides support for the performance feedback perspective, where negative performance, in terms of reduced financial job satisfaction, induces higher search efforts to improve the business situation. Moreover, we also observe that reductions in non-financial job satisfaction are negatively associated with both time and monetary investments. This supports the broadening-and-build perspective in that negative experiences – in the form of reduced non-financial job satisfaction – narrow the thought-action repertoire, thus hindering resource deployment. Implications of reduced job satisfaction on investment behavior are discussed. |
| Keywords: | job satisfaction, investment decisions, self-employment and entrepreneurship, performance feedback perspective, broadening-and-build perspective, behavioral economics, economic psychology, Germany |
| JEL: | L26 J28 G11 |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pot:cepadp:93 |
| By: | Tefera, Girum Abebe; Cassidy, Rachel; Weis, Toni Johannes |
| Abstract: | This paper presents a systematic review of the literature that evaluates the causal impact of interventions designed to enhance women's access to productive capital in low- and middle- income economies. The review identifies 27 studies that meet certain criteria, with wide geographic coverage. Overall, the evidence suggests that grants can spur entrepreneurship, but that such effects are mostly short-lived and not experienced by women operating subsistence businesses. For individual-liability loans, the evidence shows some positive impacts --- but only when credit products are designed to overcome flexibility needs and collateral constraints, and again often only for existing women entrepreneurs with higher baseline profits. The review also identifies an emerging research frontier, focused on the use of alternative data for credit scoring and the development of novel credit products facilitated by these data sources. |
| Date: | 2025–10–17 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:11232 |
| By: | Chahreddine Abbes; Amélie Lafrance-Cooke; Danny Leung |
| Abstract: | This study compares the performance of businesses owned by women (majority or equal ownership) that patent with that of majority men-owned businesses and businesses where gender of ownership cannot be assigned. It finds that women-owned firms have higher survival rates, but lower revenue growth rates, after filing for a patent than businesses where gender of ownership cannot be assigned, even after controlling for observable firm characteristics. The differences between women-owned businesses and businesses where gender of ownership cannot be assigned are greater than those between women-owned and majority men-owned businesses. Women-owned businesses have lower revenue growth rates than majority men-owned businesses, but only have higher survival rates in the fifth year after filing for a patent and after controlling for observable firm characteristics. When the possibility of exit through an acquisition is taken into account, differences in survival between women-owned businesses and other businesses disappear. This suggests that women-owned businesses that patent may have different exit strategies than other businesses. The differences in revenue growth suggest that there may be differences in the quality of the invention, or that some previously documented differences in favour of men-owned businesses (i.e., access to financing and knowledge-building opportunities) may affect the type of inventions developed by women-owned businesses and their ability to successfully commercialize them. Overall, the findings support the need for policies that take gender into account. |
| Keywords: | business performance, ownership, patents, intellectual property |
| JEL: | J23 M21 |
| Date: | 2024–09–25 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:stc:stcp8e:202400900003e |
| By: | Josip Lesica |
| Abstract: | Using the universe of firm-level tax returns for Canada this paper summarizes the new findings on the responsiveness of small businesses to corporate taxation over the 2001-2019 period. It quantifies the extent to which small businesses in Canada respond to discontinuities in the statutory corporate tax rates, estimates their bunching, and sheds light on real versus reporting responses. The study also contributes to the empirical literature by quantifying the responsiveness of corporate taxable income. |
| Keywords: | Bunching, Small Business, Corporate Taxable Income Elasticity |
| JEL: | J23 M21 |
| Date: | 2025–03–26 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:stc:stcp8e:202500300003e |
| By: | Cerkez, Nicolas; Cunningham, Wendy; Gupta, Sarika; Lung, Felix |
| Abstract: | A large share of workers in Sub-Saharan Africa earn a living through informal, low productivity household enterprises. While structural transformation toward formal wage employment is viewed as the long-term path to improving livelihoods, progress has been slow. In the meantime, small enterprises will remain a key source of employment for many years to come, making it important to better understand how to help such enterprises thrive. This paper uses original survey data from 1, 526 poor individuals across Liberia, Niger, and Senegal to examine the aspirations and constraints of urban household enterprise owners. The results suggest that most surveyed business owners voluntarily started their businesses, are satisfied with their jobs, and aspire to and have plans to expand their businesses. Most report that they earn more than they could as wage earners, with wage earners confirming the observations. However, a combination of family and business constraints and shocks may hinder their ambitions, ability to act on their goals, and realization of those goals. That said, two-thirds of micro-enterprise owners said they would accept a wage job if it offered wages on par with their current earnings. This suggests that households will continue to prefer firm ownership in the short run until structural transformation can improve earning potential of wage employment in the long term. The results suggest that household enterprise owners require a dual policy approach: one that improves current enterprise conditions while advancing longer-term structural reforms to expand access to quality wage employment. |
| Date: | 2025–10–20 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:11235 |
| By: | Gianmarco Daniele; Marco De Simoni; Domenico J. Marchetti; Giovanna Marcolongo; Paolo Pinotti |
| Abstract: | We show that credit constraints significantly increase the risk that firms are infiltrated by organized crime, defined as the covert involvement of criminal organizations in corporate decision-making. Using confidential data on criminal investigations, credit ratings, and loan histories for the universe of Italian firms, we find that a downgrade to substandard credit status reduces credit availability by 30% over five years and increases the probability of infiltration by 5%, relative to comparable firms. A local randomization design comparing firms just above and below the downgrade threshold confirms this result. The effect is pervasive across sectors and regions, but particularly strong in real estate, where the probability of infiltration rises by 10% following a downgrade. Infiltrated firms also display higher survival rates than other downgraded firms, despite similar declines in employment and revenues. These findings suggest that organized crime can serve as a financial backstop – sustaining non-viable businesses and potentially redirecting their strategies to serve criminal interests. |
| Keywords: | Organized crime, Firms, Bank Credit |
| JEL: | G32 K42 L25 O17 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:baf:cbafwp:cbafwp25255 |
| By: | Devlina ((Corresponding author), Madras School of Economics, Gandhi Mandapam Road, Behind Government Data Centre, Kotturpuram, Chennai, 600025, India.); Santosh Kumar Sahu (Associate Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Madras) |
| Abstract: | This paper attempts to understand bribing in India’s informal business sector. Using World Bank’s informal sector business survey data, 2022, for three Indian states, we find that tax evasion and avoiding formal sector corruption are two primary reasons to continue in the informal sector. However, these reasons are insufficient for paying bribes as a way to stay informal. Businesses that cite these as primary reasons have a lower probability of bribing to continue operations in the informal sector. Instead, the probability of paying bribes is higher for those businesses that cite ease of registration and lack of knowledge & information about the registration process as one of the challenges in transiting to the formal sector. We also find that businesses with sales vulnerability and financial constraints have a higher probability of bribing to remain informal. To this view, policy focus should be on simplifying registration processes and spreading awareness and benefits of becoming a formal sector, which is in line with the theory of firm growth. Long-term investments that focus on improving the education and skills of informal owners and curb corruption should be considered. |
| Keywords: | Informal sector, bribe, corruption, sales-vulnerability, tax evasion, ease of registration |
| JEL: | D22 D73 L21 O17 |
| Date: | 2025–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mad:wpaper:2025-291 |
| By: | Alexander Amundsen; Amélie Lafrance-Cooke; Danny Leung |
| Abstract: | Zombie firms are businesses that persistently perform poorly over time without exiting, and their prevalence has been rising over time across many advanced economies. They negatively affect economic growth as they tend to be unproductive and compete with other healthy firms for scarce resources. In Canada, while the share of zombie firms was falling leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic, they were becoming less productive over time, were negatively affecting healthy firms and were increasingly lowering aggregate productivity. In 2019, aggregate productivity would have been up to 5% higher had zombie firms exited (Amundsen et al., 2023). |
| Keywords: | zombie firms, COVID-19, business supports |
| JEL: | J23 M21 |
| Date: | 2025–01–22 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:stc:stcp8e:202500100002e |
| By: | Stephan Heblich; Marlon Seror; Hao Xu; Yanos Zylberberg |
| Abstract: | We study the impact of large, successful manufacturing plants on other local producers in China, focusing on “Million-Rouble Plants†built in the 1950s during a brief alliance with the U.S.S.R. The ephemeral geopolitical situation and the locations of allied and enemy airbases provide exogenous variation in plant siting. We find a boom-and-bust pattern: Counties hosting these plants were 80% more productive than control counties in 1982 but 20% less productive by 2010. This decline reflects the performance of local establishments, which exhibit low productivity, limited innovation, and high markup. Specialization hindered spillovers, preventing the emergence of new clusters and local entrepreneurship. |
| Date: | 2025–04–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bri:uobdis:25/792 |
| By: | Huju Liu; Chaohui Lu; Haozhen Zhang; Jianwei Zhong |
| Abstract: | Canada has one of the highest shares of immigrants among developed countries. According to the 2021 Census, immigrants made up nearly one-quarter (23.0%) of the population—the largest proportion among G7 nations—and this figure is expected to rise to almost 32% by 2041 (Statistics Canada, 2022). Immigrants also tend to have higher business ownership rates compared with those born in Canada (Green et al., 2016). Therefore, understanding the impact of immigrant-owned businesses on the Canadian economy is essential. |
| Keywords: | Immigrant-owned firms, Canada, immigrant ownership, firm characteristics |
| JEL: | J23 M21 |
| Date: | 2025–02–26 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:stc:stcp8e:202500200002e |
| By: | Bassirou Gueye |
| Abstract: | The release of time-series data spanning from 2005 to 2018 has provided insights into the trends and characteristics of Indigenous-owned businesses in Canada (Gueye et al., 2022a). These data enabled the identification of key developments, including overall growth in the number of Indigenous-owned businesses, a notable shift toward younger business owners and an increased presence of women in Indigenous business leadership. However, this period also exposed challenges, since compared with the 2005 level, the number of Indigenous-owned businesses grew faster than that of non-Indigenous-owned businesses in earlier years but slower in more recent years. |
| Keywords: | Indigenous-owned businesses, business owners, Indigenous, COVID-19 pandemic |
| JEL: | J23 M21 |
| Date: | 2024–12–19 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:stc:stcp8e:202401200005e |
| By: | Florian Englmaier (LMU Munich); Jose E. Galdon-Sanchez (Universidad Publica de Navarra); Ricard Gil (IESE Business School); Michael Kaiser (E.CA Economics); Helene Strandt (LMU Munich) |
| Abstract: | This paper empirically examines how management practices affect firm productivity over the business cycle. Using plant-level high-dimensional human resource policies survey data collected in Spain in 2006, we employ unsupervised machine learning to describe clusters of management practices (“management styles”). We establish a positive correlation between a management style associated with structured management and performance prior to the 2008 financial crisis. Interestingly, this correlation turns negative during the financial crisis and positive again in the economic recovery post-2013. Our evidence suggests firms with more structured management are more likely to have practices fostering culture and intangible investments such that they focus in long-run profitability, prioritizing innovation over cost reduction, while having higher adjustment costs in the short-run through higher share of fixed assets and lower employee turnover. |
| Keywords: | management practices; culture; unsupervised machine learning; productivity; great recession; |
| JEL: | M12 D22 C38 |
| Date: | 2025–10–15 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rco:dpaper:548 |
| By: | Ryan Macdonald; Josip Lesica; Jenny Watt; Rupert Allen |
| Abstract: | Technological change has led to opportunities and challenges for firms in cultural industries, prompting questions about how these industries have been impacted in Canada. However, there is a lack of information about firms operating in cultural domains. This study attempts to fill this information gap by identifying firms in Canada’s cultural supply chain using administrative data from 2008 to 2020. |
| Keywords: | culture, cultural institutions, firm dynamics |
| JEL: | J23 M21 |
| Date: | 2025–04–23 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:stc:stcp8e:202500400005e |
| By: | Matthew Brown; Mark Brown; Ryan Macdonald |
| Abstract: | This article presents an exploratory analysis of the relationship between the population, firm counts and average property crime from 2017 to 2020 across the Toronto census metropolitan area (CMA). It combines datasets from different domains—crime, business counts and population data—using 500 m by 500 m spatial grids to explore their relationships. At this scale, residential and business land use can be at least partially separated, allowing the independent association between residential populations, business counts and crime to be measured and mapped across the Toronto CMA. This analysis provides a picture of the spatial pattern of crimes across the CMA, explores and validate the data by establishing expected baseline relationships, and points towards areas for more in-depth analysis to determine the relationship between crime and business outcomes. After accounting for the population of grid squares, a positive association between business counts and crime was found, consistent with previous work. Furthermore, after considering population and firm counts, statistically significant spatial clusters of high (and low) crime rates were found. This work therefore sets the foundation for future analysis that would examine how variations in crime rates across space and time affect business outcomes (e.g., firm profitability and exit). |
| Keywords: | property crime, firms, businesses, spatial crime patterns, geospatial analysis, crime hotspots |
| JEL: | J23 M21 |
| Date: | 2024–11–27 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:stc:stcp8e:202401100001e |
| By: | Xu, Tao Louie; Liu, Li |
| Abstract: | This review revisits endogenous innovation as a co-evolutionary process of dynamic capabilities amidst the global techno-nationalist Tech Cold War. Integrating micro organisational and macro institutional perspectives, it articulates a triple-staged capability growth chain: technology exploration, market exploitation, and ecosystem orchestration to capture the innovation-oriented adaptive ambidexterity by which emerging tech firms transition from component supplier to supply-chain ecosystem orchestrator. Proposing a research agenda of innovation ecosystem, mega-science infrastructure, regional cluster, and organisational culture, this research offers an alternative analytical approach to endogenous innovation in fractured environments across firm, regional, and national dimensions. |
| Keywords: | endogenous innovation; Tech Cold War; neo-techno-nationalism; dynamic capabilities; industrial development; emerging-markets firms |
| JEL: | O3 O31 O32 O33 |
| Date: | 2025–06–19 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:126220 |
| By: | Ibrahim Rym (UJM - Université Jean Monnet - Saint-Étienne, COACTIS - COnception de l'ACTIon en Situation - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - UJM - Université Jean Monnet - Saint-Étienne, LEST - Laboratoire d'Economie et de Sociologie du Travail - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) |
| Abstract: | In a context of successive or prolonged crises and the re-evaluation of our productive and democratic models in light of planetary challenges, we consider it more crucial than ever to develop the capacity to support today's and tomorrow's entrepreneurs in the processes of social transformation in which they participate. However, entrepreneurship research is fragmented into a diversity of research streams, whose history has been shaped by various, often outdated, borrowings from neighboring disciplines (sociology, psychology, economic geography, anthropology...), leading to significant conceptual proliferation and the mobilization of knowledge that is sometimes obsolete. These streams (institutional entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship, international entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship...), which represent sets of entrepreneurial situations that appear distinct but also reflect the concerns and beliefs prevalent at the times they emerged (Gabrielsson et al., 2023), have since developed their own trajectories. As a result, their evolution has sometimes taken divergent paths, making it increasingly difficult to transfer knowledge produced in one domain to another (McMullen et al., 2021; Baker and Welter, 2021). This further complicates the mobilization of these distinct academic corpora to support entrepreneurial processes, during which the situations encountered and the scope of opportunities extend beyond the boundaries delineated by the fields of literature. In this pivotal period presaging the restructuring of our economies and entrepreneurial models, the need for the discipline to consolidate around a comprehensive and parsimonious conceptual core, applicable to a multiplicity of specific situations, has become increasingly apparent (McMullen et al., 2021; Baker and Welter, 2021). This requires developing the capacity to empirically refute certain existing theoretical propositions, to challenge specific conceptual frameworks, to enhance the universality of the knowledge generated, and to specify actionable, non-essentialist categories of situations for practitioners. Such categories should refer to regimes of action - e.g., seeking partners, legitimizing - rather than identities attributed to their manifestations, such as social entrepreneurship, necessity entrepreneurship, or entrepreneurship in the Global South. This pursuit of parsimony – a form of "housekeeping" (Dimov, 2024) involving the sorting and refinement of its foundational elements – justifies turning to contributions from philosophy as a discipline, and more specifically to philosophies of action. Attention must therefore focus on understanding the entrepreneurial process itself, or rather the various forms of successive situations in which it is instantiated, to resist any temptation toward reification. It must also focus on how entrepreneurs perceive this open-ended process, how they project themselves into it, apprehend the situations they encounter, and act within them. Ultimately, interest lies in the interplay between cognition, action, and situation by which the entrepreneurial process is instantiated, as well as in the intersubjectivities that influence its trajectory (Le Pontois and Foliard, 2025). It is only by documenting these dimensions empirically that it will be possible to generate truly relevant knowledge (Thompson et al., 2023). Our fundamental research aims to actively contribute to this ambition of theoretical consolidation through the proposal of an original methodological approach for data collection and analysis, reproducible across various levels of analysis. We seek to demonstrate the value of this methodological approach, which is rarely employed in our discipline (and which we have tested on a small scale), by combining complementary approaches drawn from two distinct disciplinary domains—sociology and ergonomics. |
| Keywords: | Methodology, Epistemology, Agency, Entrepreneurship |
| Date: | 2025–07–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05313293 |
| By: | Yousra Nassou; Zakaria Bennani (ENCGT - Ecole Nationale de Commerce et de Gestion de Tanger - UAE - Abdelmalek Essaadi University [Tétouan] = Université Abdelmalek Essaadi [Tétouan]) |
| Abstract: | This study explores the historical evolution of SMEs in Morocco, emphasizing their diversity and the challenges they face. Through a comprehensive literature review, the analysis focuses on aspects specific to SMEs, including owner-driven management, limited resources, and performance measurement systems tailored to these structures. It also highlights the distinctive challenges of Moroccan SMEs, the influences of the economic environment, and government interventions, particularly the INTELAKA program, aimed at strengthening the competitiveness of SMEs in the country. |
| Keywords: | Government Support, Morocco, SMEs |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05217049 |