“Surfeiting,the appetite may sicken”: entrepreneurship and happiness

Do the presence and nature of entrepreneurship impact on national happiness, and are nations with happy citizens better for entrepreneurs to start new businesses? To provide tentative answers we survey the literature on entrepreneurship and subjective well-being and use various data sources to uncover the first evidence of the relationship between entrepreneurship and happiness at the country level. We find that opportunity-motivated entrepreneurship may contribute to a nation’s happiness but only to a certain point, at which the effects of happiness begin to decline. Moreover, our results suggest that a nation’s happiness affects early-stage opportunity-driven entrepreneurial activity.     

Religion,the Nature of Ultimate Owner,and Corporate Philanthropic Giving: Evidence from China

Using a sample of Chinese listed firms for the period of 2004–2010, this study examines the impact of religion on corporate philanthropic giving. Based on hand-collected data of religion and corporate philanthropic giving, we provide strong and robust evidence that religion is significantly positively associated with Chinese listed firms’ philanthropic giving. This finding is consistent with the view that religiosity has remarkable effects on individual thinking and behavior, and can serve as social norms to influence corporate philanthropy. Moreover, religion and corporate philanthropic giving have a significantly weaker (less pronounced) positive association for state-owned enterprises than for non-state-owned enterprises. The results are robust to a variety of sensitivity tests. Our results highlight religious influence on corporate philanthropic giving in contemporary China, an old traditional country with a typical communist economy.     

Financial Structure,Corporate Finance and Economic Growth

This paper examines how a country’s financial structure affects economic growth through its impact on how corporations raise and manage funds. We define a country’s financial structure to consist of the institutions, financial technology and rules of the game that define how financial activity is organized at a point in time. We emphasize that the aspects of financial structure that encourage entrepreneurship are not the same as those that ensure the efficiency of established firms. Financial structures that permit the development of specialized capital by financial intermediaries are crucial to economic growth.     

Extending William Baumol’s theory on entrepreneurship and institutions: lessons from post-Second World War Greece

Abstract

This article examines William Baumol’s theory about the interaction between taxation and entrepreneurship and proposes an extension to it. The analysis shows that the traditional form of Baumol’s model, focusing mainly on the level of taxes, cannot be used in order to explain what happened in the Greek case. Utilising historical evidence from the mid 1950s to the late 1980s, this article confirms that problematic tax rules create difficulties for entrepreneurship and can lead to unproductive forms of it, as Baumol suggests. However, the focus here is on aspects of the system of taxation that Baumol’s model, examining solely tax rates and levels of taxation, neglected. It is shown that, as far as Greek entrepreneurship is concerned, the adverse effects of the system of taxation came not from the level of taxes, but mostly from a series of issues that increased its perceived unfairness and illegitimacy. Some of such issues were the complexity and frequent change of legislation, the insufficient organisation of the tax bureaus as well as the lack of adequate training and arbitrariness of the members of tax services. The evidence presented here suggests that Baumol’s model can be enriched by taking into consideration these aspects of taxation too.     

Does Religious Similarity Matter in International Trade in Services?

Impacts of religion on trade in services were examined using gravity models with two estimation methods: Poisson pseudo‐maximum likelihood (PPML), to correct for heteroscedasticity and bias due to the exclusion of zero trade flow, and standard Heckman correction to compensate for sample selection bias. We found that religious similarity contributes to increased international trade in services by establishing ‘trust‐related institutions’. Second, religious pluralism (variety) fosters trade even more than religious similarity, suggesting that in facilitating trade, religious openness matters more than religious similarity. Third, a strong dominant religion discourages trade in services, whereas the presence of religious minorities encourages trade in services. A highly significant inverse Mill's ratio (IMR) result indicated the presence of sample selection bias, indicating that controls are necessary to prevent estimation bias. This study concluded that religion is an important determining factor for trade in services, positively affecting interpersonal trust and thereby reducing institutional distance between countries.     

Hierarchy and conservatism in the contributions of resources to entrepreneurial activity

This study addresses the relationship between the munificence offered by a country’s proximate institutions in terms of a critical financial resource (informal investments) and human resource (entrepreneurship education) and its early-stage entrepreneurial activity. We also examine how this relationship might be moderated by underlying cultural values. Our main thesis is that the positive effects of resource munificence of proximate institutions on early-stage entrepreneurial activity should be attenuated in countries with a more hierarchical and conservative culture. We test our hypotheses using a multi-source dataset that spans 42 countries.     

Regulative institutions supporting entrepreneurship in emerging economies: A comparison of China and India

China and India are touted as new entrepreneurship powerhouses. The two countries’ different institutional history and characteristics have led to differences in environments related to entrepreneurship. There are some well-founded rationales as well as a number of misinformed and ill-guided viewpoints about the friendliness of the environment to support entrepreneurship in each country as well as the China–India differences concerning entrepreneurial environment. This article contributes to this debate by offering theoretical and empirical evidence regarding the differences in regulative institutions in the two economies. Specifically, we compare the state’s regulative, participative, and supportive roles from the standpoint of entrepreneurship in the two countries.     

Home country institutions,social value orientation,and the internationalization of ventures

We examined how home country formal institutions and the venture’s value orientation influenced the venture’s likelihood of internationalization based on a data set that was adapted from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) data in the year 2009, covering 7668 individual ventures in 25 countries. Better-developed home country formal institutions are found to have a supportive impact on the venture’s likelihood of internationalization. The supportive impact is also found to be weaker for socially oriented ventures than for profit-oriented ventures. The venture’s social value orientation negatively moderates the home country formal institutions–likelihood of internationalization relationship. The negative moderating effects can be explained as follows: Socially oriented ventures in the better-developed home country institutional environment are less likely to develop coping skills against uncertain and risky institutional environments, which are common in their host countries. Besides the theoretical contributions, this paper also highlights the implications for both business researchers and policy makers.     

The double impact of institutions: Institutional spillovers and entrepreneurial activity in the solar photovoltaic industry

We investigate whether and when institutional spillovers, i.e., institutional effects across national borders, drive domestic entrepreneurial activity. Drawing on data on venture capital (VC) investments in the solar photovoltaic industry, we provide evidence for institutional spillovers and demonstrate that they are moderated by the presence of domestic institutions and the institutional distance between domestic and foreign policy schemes. By showing that domestic institutions not only influence entrepreneurial activity directly, but also facilitate spillovers, our findings demonstrate a double impact of institutions. Overall, we contribute to the literatures on the drivers of VC investments, institutions and entrepreneurship, and environmental entrepreneurship.     

Engagement in entrepreneurship in emerging economies: Interactive effects of individual-level factors and institutional conditions

This paper examines individuals’ engagement in entrepreneurship in emerging economies. We conceive of such engagement as encompassing opportunity discovery, evaluation, and exploitation. We investigate the influence of individuals’ household income and level of education on their engagement in entrepreneurship, as well as the interaction effects between these individual-level factors and country-level regulatory, cognitive, and normative institutions. We test our hypotheses on a multi-source dataset from 22 emerging economies using a multilevel analysis technique. Our results indicate that the direct effect of individuals’ household income on their engagement in entrepreneurship is persistent, regardless of institutional conditions; but the influence of education level varies contingent upon various institutional conditions.     

Engaging diasporas as international entrepreneurs in developing countries: In search of determinants

Diaspora has been increasingly recognized by practitioners and scholars as an important factor of development in developing economies. Through their remittances and expertise, diaspora members have become an important source of foreign direct investment and managerial capabilities. Although the literature is glutted with examples of the impact of diaspora in fostering international entrepreneurship and reducing poverty, a theoretical foundation and framework is needed to explain this impact. This study explores a theoretical foundation of the diaspora entrepreneurship. A framework identifying the determinants of the diaspora’s international new venture creation in the country of origin is developed. The study suggests that diaspora international entrepreneurship depends on the level of altruistic motivation, need of social recognition, entrepreneurial opportunities, friendliness and receptivity of the home country, as well as integration of and support to immigrants in the host countries. Propositions for diaspora entrepreneurship are developed.     

Maryann Feldman: Recipient of the 2013 Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research

This article reviews the scientific contributions of the 2013 recipient of the Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research, Maryann Feldman, Heninger Distinguished Professor in the Department of Public Policy at the University of North Carolina. Maryann Feldman is well known for her contributions to the study of the geography of innovation. A central focus of her work is on the role of entrepreneurial activity in the formation of regional industry clusters. She has studied entrepreneurial events involving both individuals and teams and the role of knowledge spillovers and finance in geographical clustering. She has also addressed other important aspects of contemporary entrepreneurship research, such as how academic entrepreneurship is influenced by intellectual property rights and modes of finance and how high-technology entrepreneurship aligns with public policy and the geography of innovation. The most significant impact of Maryann Feldman’s scientific output lies in research on firm location, inter-firm knowledge spillovers, and clusters/regional development. Her research addresses macro aspects of industry evolution, micro-level aspects of firm strategy and organization, as well as meso-level aspects of institutions, infrastructures, and policy. The Global Award consists of 100,000 euro and a statuette by the internationally renowned Swedish sculptor Carl Milles.     

Foreign direct investment and entrepreneurship: Does the role of institutions matter?

Development economics, international business, and entrepreneurship literature suggest that foreign direct investment (FDI) has significant positive spillover effects for entrepreneurial activities of host economies. However, the findings of past research are mixed, and they do not always confirm this suggestion. We argue that the reason for conflicting findings may be because of an incomplete understanding of the factors that influence the FDI-entrepreneurship nexus in different contexts. Previous studies have carried out only limited exploration of the contingencies in the FDI and domestic entrepreneurship relationship that may depend on the host country’s institutional capacity. We argue that not all countries can reap the rewards from FDI equally. Rather, we hypothesize that countries need to have a sufficient degree of institutional capacity relevant to specific conditions and appropriate threshold levels to successfully capture the positive spillover effects of FDI on domestic entrepreneurship. Utilizing panel data from 2006 to 2016 for 97 emerging markets, developing and developed countries (at different income levels), and a System Generalized Method of Moments (SGMM) estimator that controls for instrument proliferation in dealing with endogeneity problems, we test this hypothesis. We find that FDI has a negative (crowding-out) effect on domestic entrepreneurship at below-threshold levels of institutional capacity, and a positive (crowding-in) effect at above-threshold levels of institutional capacity. The crowding-out effect diminishes as the institutional capacity changes or improves to meet mutating economic environment conditions. Our findings are robust across a wide range of aggregate and disaggregate measures of different types of institutions and alternative empirical strategies.     

Varieties of entrepreneurship: exploring the institutional foundations of different entrepreneurship types through ‘Varieties-of-Capitalism’ arguments

While entrepreneurship researchers agree that institutions ‘matter’ for entrepreneurship, they also have a rather encompassing understanding of institutions as almost any external factor that influences entrepreneurship. Ultimately, this literature thus comes up with a long list of institutional factors that may explain entrepreneurial differences between countries. But which institutions are most influential? How do these institutions relate to different types of entrepreneurship? And to what extent are institutions complementary to each other in the way they sustain different entrepreneurship types? The literature on ‘Varieties-of-Capitalism’ (VoC) offers a parsimonious theoretical framework to address these questions. Based on the VoC literature, we theoretically derive a consistent set of institutional indicators that can explain differences in entrepreneurship types between countries. Based on principal component and cluster analyses, we illustrate how 21 Western developed economies cluster around four distinct institutional settings. Furthermore, we use simple OLS regressions to show how these institutional constellations are related to different types of entrepreneurship. We conclude that four different ‘Varieties of Entrepreneurship’ can be identified across the Western world. The main implication of our findings is that a ‘perfect’ institutional constellation, equally facilitating different types of entrepreneurship, does not exist. Policy-makers seeking to stimulate entrepreneurship are thus faced with the trade-off of targeting policy reforms to that entrepreneurship type they intend to promote—at the expense of other types of entrepreneurship and the broader societal consequences such reforms will have.     

Does religion influence location choice in the hotel industry?

Relying on data from the Spanish hotel industry, this paper analyzes the role of informal institutional factors (IIF) in location choice. Earlier studies mostly use an aggregate level of cultural differences as informal institutional factors. We, however, go deeper into this concept and study the impact of two distinct but interrelated informal institutional factors, religion and language, on the location decisions of hotel chains. We resolve the overlapping problem between these two highly correlated IIF by means of a ‘layer’ measurement in Confirmatory Factor Analysis. Our results show that the higher the informal institutional differences (IID), the lower the presence of the hotels in the foreign country. While physical distance plays a key moderating role, formal institutional differences (FID) did not show any effect. We contribute by unravelling the role of language and religion in location choice in the internationalization process of service firms. Moreover, we test the moderating role of formal institutions in these decisions, thus combining the impact of formal and informal institutions on location choices in service firms.     

Brands and religious labels: a spillover perspective

Abstract

With different religions mixing in many societies, religious consumer groups receive increasing attention as target segments. Trying to appeal to such religious segments, companies differentiate food products by adding religious labels (e.g. kosher or halal) to packaging. But while this makes the products more attractive to the consumers of the focal religion, adding a religious label may also impact the brand evaluation by consumers with no religious beliefs or a different religious orientation. Drawing upon social identity theory to explain the psychological basis of inter-group discrimination, and taking account of information integration theory to analyse how religious labels affect product and brand evaluations, this article aims to assess the spillover effects between religion and brand among consumers who are not part of the religious communities addressed by these labels. The findings indicate that the perception of religious labels on food packaging is influenced by the attitudes towards the religion and the brand, while the relative importance of both antecedents is dependent upon several consumer characteristics. The theoretical and managerial implications of our findings, the limitations of our work and directions for future research are discussed.     

Trickle Effects of Cross-Sector Social Partnerships

Cross-sector social partnerships are often studied from a macro and meso perspective, also in an attempt to assess effectiveness and societal impact. This article pays specific attention to the micro perspective, i.e. individual interactions between and within organizations related to partnerships that address the ‘social good’. By focusing on the potential effects and mechanisms at the level of individuals and the organization(s) with which they interact, it aims to help fill a gap in research on partnerships, including more insight into the process of interaction. We conceptually explore micro level interactions, and how partnership effects may ‘trickle down’ (e.g. from management to employees), or ‘trickle up’ (from employees to management) or ‘trickle round’ (e.g. between employees). Based on the literature from various disciplines, we discuss how more generic theories on social exchange and contagion, social learning and attraction-selection-attrition can help shed light on micro level interactions in a partnership, considering in particular transmission mechanisms via employees, top and middle management, and customers. In this way, partnerships can have wider benefits, as individuals have multiple roles and effects at the micro level can spread to the meso and macro levels as well. Implications for research and practice are outlined.     

Entrepreneurship in the Soviet Union and post-Socialist Russia

This article advances the understanding of the present and future of Russian entrepreneurship. Based on secondary information published in the West and in contemporary Russia, empirical research and personal interviews, general characteristics of Russian entrepreneurship within different controversial periods that occurred during different periods of this country's history are presented. Also discussed are the influences of ethnic and religious minorities and foreign businesses on entrepreneurship development as well as the relatively low social status of the entrepreneur. The vitality of entrepreneurial response is discussed in terms of recent events in post-Socialist Russia including the transformation of its economy and society and its integration into the global market. In so doing, the article presents the latest trends in entrepreneurship in the country as well as a profile of the Russian entrepreneur.     

利用出口信用保险应对次贷危机对我国出口企业的影响

美国次贷危机爆发后,其信用风险向世界金融市场扩散,并对全球经济产生了负面影响。由于我国经济对美国出口的依存度较高,加之美国资金信贷风险的转嫁,次贷危机对我国外贸出口的影响已相当明显。出口信用保险是支持一国对外出口,帮助企业规避出口收汇风险的有力工具,特别是在宏观经济面临不利因素的情况下,出口企业应利用专业的风险管理机构保障自身的利益。     

International entrepreneurial SMEs in the muslim world: The role of religion in the GCC countries

Recent studies examining the internationalisation of SMEs in emerging economies have observed that religion affects international market entry, which suggests that specific cultural aspects, such as religion, have not hitherto received enough attention. Hence, this study examines a theme that has seemingly escaped the research agenda: how does religion affect SMEs’ internationalisation? The study draws empirical evidence from 10 manufacturing SMEs located in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region. Through an embedded approach to case study research, the study queries the role of religion in the development of intra-Muslim internationalisation and contributes to the scant literature that examines the impact of Islamic values on international business activities. The findings show three dimensions of Islamic entrepreneurship, viz. regional rather than international networking orientation, risk aversion and proactiveness.