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on Entrepreneurship |
| By: | Rafael Guntin (UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER); Federico Kochen (BANCO DE ESPAÑA AND CEMFI) |
| Abstract: | What are the origins of top firms? What features characterize their life cycle trajectories on the way to the top? Using longitudinal firm-level data, we document novel facts about the first twenty years of the firms that reach the top 1 percent of the size distribution. Compared to the firms in the bottom 99 percent, top firms are eight times larger at entry and grow six times more during their first two decades. In terms of inputs, they start with high capital investments, yet their capital-output ratio and labor share decline as they age. As a result, their profit share is much more backloaded towards the second decade of their life cycle. We show that a firm dynamics model with ex-ante heterogeneity, non-homothetic input costs, and forward-looking financing can explain these empirical patterns. Our quantitative results showcase the importance of accounting for top and bottom firm dynamics for the aggregate implications of financial frictions, recent macroeconomic trends, and corporate taxation. |
| Keywords: | top 1 percent, firm size distribution, firm dynamics, financial frictions |
| JEL: | E44 O47 G30 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bde:wpaper:2541 |
| By: | Magdalena Adamus; Martin Guzi; Eva Ballová Mikušková |
| Abstract: | The paper investigates gender biases and differential treatment of women and men in the business start-up phase. A sample of 498 entrepreneurs from Slovakia participated in an online experiment and evaluated three fictitious business plans in terms of the applicants’ competence, likeability, and business ability. The start-ups were positioned in three different sectors—cosmetics production, services provision, and software development—where men’s and women’s chances of success may be viewed differently. Following Goldberg’s paradigm, half of the evaluators received business plans presented as written by female and half by male applicants; otherwise the plans were identical. Results imply that female applicants are assessed similarly to male applicants, but more masculine evaluators assess women’s business plans and their potential in entrepreneurship more critically. The study advises caution in recommending more female evaluators in the business plan assessment. If women who become involved in entrepreneurship are excessively masculine and masculinity is associated with a less favourable evaluation of potential female entrepreneurs, such policies could backfire against women, putting them in a more disadvantaged position. |
| Date: | 2025–11–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cel:dpaper:79 |
| By: | Ruiqing Cao; Abhishek Bhatia |
| Abstract: | The rapid diffusion of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has substantially lowered the costs of launching and developing digital ventures. GenAI can potentially both enable previously unviable entrepreneurial ideas by lowering resource needs and improve the performance of existing ventures. We explore how founders' technical and managerial expertise shapes GenAI's impact on digital ventures along these dimensions. Exploiting exogenous variation in GenAI usage across venture categories and the timing of its broad availability for software tasks (e.g., GitHub Copilot's public release and subsequent GenAI tools), we find that the number of new venture launches increased and the median time to launch decreased significantly more in categories with relatively high GenAI usage. GenAI's effect on new launches is larger for founders without managerial experience or education, while its effect on venture capital (VC) funding likelihood is stronger for founders with technical experience or education. Overall, our results suggest that GenAI expands access to digital entrepreneurship for founders lacking managerial expertise and enhances venture performance among technical founders. |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2511.06545 |
| By: | Hlaing, Thi Thi Soe; Tun, Yu Yu; San, Aye Moe; Lwin, Hnin Yu |
| Keywords: | Agricultural and Food Policy |
| Date: | 2025–09–15 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:asea25:373401 |
| By: | I. Etzo; L. Ciucci |
| Abstract: | This study investigates the competitiveness and efficiency of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) within the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI) in Italy, using a comprehensive firm-level dataset from 2019 to 2023. We estimate Total Factor Productivity (TFP) to analyze firm performance, addressing endogeneity concerns through panel fixed-effects models and employing a Translog production function for flexible input elasticity. Our findings reveal significant spatial heterogeneity, with central and north-western regions exhibiting higher CCI productivity than southern areas. Furthermore, we uncover disparities related to firm size, age, and specialization within Creative versus Cultural domains. The largest and oldest CCI firms show a higher TFP. The Creative industry demonstrates greater productivity than the Cultural industry. We provide evidence that manufacturing-oriented CCI tend to exhibit lower productivity compared to service-oriented CCI. The results underscore the importance of targeted policies to address regional disparities and sectorspecific challenges within the CCI ecosystem, promoting innovation and sustainable growth. |
| Keywords: | Cultural and creative industries;total factor productivity;SMEs;Italian regions |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cns:cnscwp:202514 |
| By: | G. Atzeni; P. Arca; A. Carosi |
| Abstract: | This paper examines whether climate-risk mitigation investments enhance firms' access to bank credit, with a particular focus on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which typically operate in information-opaque environments. We hypothesise that the adoption of mitigation practices serves as a signal of managerial quality, which is positively perceived by financial institutions. Using firm-level data from the Enterprise Survey conducted by the EBRD, EIB, and World Bank Group, we estimate an endogenous switching regression model to account for selection on both observables and unobservables. Firms are classified into mitigation-intensive and low-mitigation regimes based on their adoption of ten climate-related practices. Our results show that firms in the mitigation-intensive regime have a 38.6% higher probability of accessing credit compared to the counterfactual scenario, while firms in the low-mitigation regime would increase their probability by 28.9% if they adopted more mitigation measures. The difference between the treatment effects confirms positive selection into the mitigation-intensive regime and supports the signalling hypothesis. |
| Keywords: | climite-risk mitigation measures;Bank Credit;endogenous switching;Signalling |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cns:cnscwp:202513 |
| By: | Heng-fu Zou (Institute for Advanced Study, Wuhan University; World Bank) |
| Abstract: | Frank H. Knight's Risk, Uncertainty and Profit(1921) gave economics the canonical distinction between risk and uncertainty and explained profit as the residual return to the bearer of genuine (non-probabilistic) uncertainty. Ludwig von Mises's Human Action (1949) subsumes Knight's insight within a far more comprehensive architecture. Mises embeds en trepreneurship in a praxeological theory of action; shows that monetary calculation and market prices are the preconditions for entrepreneurial judgment; analytically separates entrepreneurial profit from interest, wages, and monopoly gains; locates entrepreneurial roles throughout firms and markets (not only in owner-insurers); frames competition as a dynamic selection process guided by profit and loss; links monetary-financial regimes to systematic entrepreneurial error (business cycles); and derives the institutional constitution-private property, open entry, freedom of contract - of what we call a republic of entrepreneurs. This paper reconstructs Mises's entrepreneur in depth, contrasts it with Knight's narrower uncertainty- bearing vantage, and develops measurable implications for growth, policy, and political economy. |
| Date: | 2025–10–31 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cuf:wpaper:800 |
| By: | Schulz, Frederik Nikolai; Hanf, Jon H. |
| Keywords: | Agribusiness |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:gewi24:364757 |
| By: | Heng-fu Zou (Institute for Advanced Study, Wuhan University; World Bank) |
| Abstract: | We propose a historical political-economy of the republic of entrepreneurs: a civic order where open entry, impersonal law, price signals, and lawful imitation convert dispersed conjectures into growth. Grounded in the Mises-Hayek-Kirzner view (monetary calculation, dispersed knowledge, entrepreneurial discovery) and spanning cases from antiquity to Industry 4.0, we show prosperity tracks proposal density, feedback speed, and dif fusion breadth-not elite R&D alone. Reframing Schumpeter, sustained enrichment is chiefly creative accumulation under general rules. Policy follows: protect the commons of discovery-general rules, interoperable standards, contestable markets, and IP that teaches and expires. |
| Date: | 2025–11–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cuf:wpaper:801 |
| By: | Heng-fu Zou (Institute for Advanced Study, Wuhan University; World Bank) |
| Abstract: | Schumpeter's heroic entrepreneur and "creative destruction" remain the dominant metaphors for innovation and cycles. Read against history and theory-from Cantillon's functional entrepreneur, Mises's monetary calculation and residual claimancy, Hayek's dispersed knowledge and discovery, Kirzner's alertness, Mokyr's Industrial Enlightenment, McCloskey's bourgeois dignity, and Phelps's grassroots dynamism-those metaphors misallocate causal weight. Innovation is chiefly a civic process carried out by a republic of entrepreneurs: many actors proposing small, testable changes under general, impersonal rules; markets and peer criticism supply fast feedback; lawful imitation multiplies gains. Monopoly "havens" are neither necessary nor suficient for discovery and often dull price and reputation signals. Business cycles need not originate in technology clusters; monetary-financial coordination failures (credit booms, interest-rate mispricing, policy shocks) can amplify or swamp a steady flow of decentralized discovery. Historical cases-Britain, the United States, France, Germany, and modern biomedicine - show the braid of the republics of letters, science, and entrepreneurs turning useful knowledge into useful industry through open entry, standards, and disclosure norms. We propose a republican policy constitution: protect the commons of discovery (contestable markets, interoperable standards, IP that teaches and expires, and publication/priority rules) rather than pick champions or sanctify durable market power. The framework yields testable predictions about proposal density, feedback speed, and difusion breadth and offers a practical agenda for growth and development. |
| Date: | 2025–10–31 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cuf:wpaper:799 |
| By: | Heng-fu Zou (Institute for Advanced Study, Wuhan University; World Bank) |
| Abstract: | This paper advances the idea of a republic of entrepreneurs - a spontaneous, rule-governed order in which many people repeatedly propose, test, and diffuse improvements-and argues that it is the main engine of modern prosperity. We braid this republic with the republic of letters and the republic of science, contending that open discourse, self-governed inquiry, and contestable enterprise reinforce one another to convert useful knowledge into useful industry. The analytical backbone in- tegrates Cantillon's functional entrepreneur, Mises's economic calculation and residual claimancy, Hayek's discovery procedure and dispersed knowl edge, Kirzner's alertness and equilibration, Mokyr's Industrial Enlightenment and "market for ideas, " McCloskey's rhetoric of bourgeois dignity, and Phelps's grassroots dynamism. Historical cases-Britain, the United States, France, Germany, and biomedicine show that breakthrough eras depended less on elite R&D and more on dense portfolios of small, decentralized experiments under general rules that kept feedback honest and im itation lawful. We contrast this republican view with outcome-targeting elite-centric growth models, derive testable implications (proposal den- sity, feedback speed, diffusion breadth), and sketch a policy stance that privileges general over discretionary rules, interoperability and open stan dards, reputation systems that make quality legible, and intellectual property that teaches while remaining finite. Reframing innovation as a civic practice explains both the magnitude and inclusiveness of the Great Enrichment and recommends "republic of entrepreneurs" as a term of art for growth and development economics. |
| Date: | 2025–11–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cuf:wpaper:798 |