Entrepreneurial overconfidence and firm survival: an analysis using the Kauffman firm survey

We used the Kauffman Firm Survey of ventures founded in the year 2004 to identify overconfident (OC) entrepreneurs and found, contrary to the existing literature, that the hazard ratio for these entrepreneurs was lower than the corresponding value for their non-OC peers. We categorized an entrepreneur as OC if he or she believed that his or her firm enjoys a competitive advantage over its industry peers, while simultaneously underperforming relative to the industry in terms of average initial ROA. Specifically, we looked at the average ROA during the years 2004–2007 and compared it to the industry median. In addition to our hazard findings, we discovered that these OC entrepreneurs, while starting with lower initial ROA levels relative to their industry peers, may have enjoyed slightly better movement in ROA over the intervening years. Our results are explained in the context of the psychological literature on optimism.     

Samuelson’s operationally meaningful theorems: reflections of E. B. Wilson’s methodological attitude

This paper sheds new light on Samuelson’s early methodology as presented in his Foundations of Economic Analysis (1947) by reflecting on the similarity between his mathematical economics and Edwin B. Wilson’s mathematics. Wilson was Samuelson’s professor of advanced mathematical and statistical economics; he was also a protégé of Josiah Willard Gibbs. Wilson defined mathematics as a language that consisted of three interconnected aspects: postulational, axiomatic, and operational. In his Foundations, in a Wilsonian style, Samuelson wrote in the opening page, ‘Mathematics is a Language’ and claimed that he offered operationally meaningful theorems. In this paper, it is argued that these maxims embodied Wilson’s approach, which framed Samuelson’s mathematical and statistical thinking around 1940 and which led him to present his work as being mathematically, theoretically, and empirically well founded. Wilson’s and Percy Bridgman’s operational methodologies are also compared and Wilson is presented as a mediator between Bridgman and Samuelson.     

Cluster techniques as a method to analyze industrial competitiveness

Porter's influential study on the competitive advantage of nations inspired a methodologically extended work on Austrian data. In contrast to Porter's analysis, competitiveness is determined endogenously by means of statistical cluster techniques. Avoiding his "cut-off" approach, "well-" and "badly" performing industries are the objects of analysis. The resulting cluster centers constitute the typical pattern of competitiveness for the chosen trade indicators, while the classifications produce a "map" of Austrian industrial export performance. The results further show that: 1) clustered industries generally are rare in the case of Austria; 2) some of them are located in declining, crisis-shaken sectors; and 3) competitiveness underlines the importance of transnational links (as opposed to narrow national boundaries) for the formation of successful industries.The author is thankful to C. Driver, P. A. Geroski, D. C. Mueller, A. Torre, and to his colleagues at WIFO, most notably K. Aiginger, K. Bayer, and G. Hutschenreiter, for valuables comments on earlier drafts of the paper.     

International impact of Austrian economists

This paper attempts to document the contributions of Austrian economists to the development of economics. To this purpose we investigated the publications in international economics journals as well as citations of Austrian economists in the period from 1980 to 1989. Our results show only a very limited presence of Austrian economists in the ongoing scientific discussions, with marked differences between university departments.

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Zusammenfassung Die vorliegende Arbeit versucht, den Beitrag österreichischer Universitäts- und Forschungsinstitute zur internationalen Forschung in den Wirtschaftswissenschaften anhand von Publikationen und Zitationen für den Zeitraum 1980 bis 1989 quantitativ zu erfassen. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, daß österreichische Ökonomen in internationalen, besonders in anglo-amerikanischen Zeitschriften wenig präsent sind, wobei erhebliche Unterschiede zwischen den einzelnen Universitätsinstituten bestehen.

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We are greatly indebted to R. Niegl (Universitätsbibliothek Wien), D. Spenger (University of Regensburg), and H. Wurm (University of Vienna) for compiling and processing the data.The circulation of earlier drafts as well as the presentation of our study at WIFO and IHS has aroused various responses, comments, and suggestions, most of them very interesting and stimulating, but too numerous to thank each of our colleagues individually. We feel, however, especially indebted to Gunther Tichy and Alexander Van der Bellen for their extensive written comments. Finally, we would like to thank three anonymous referees and the editor for valuable suggestions.     

DISAGGREGATION OF STRUCTURAL CHANGE IN THE AMERICAN ECONOMY: 1947–1966

This paper utilizes input-output techniques to disaggregate and analyze structural change in the American economy between 1947 and 1966, focussing on the subperiods 1947-58, 1958-63, and 1963-66-periods determined by the availability of input-output tables for the terminal years. There was wide variability in the changes in output requirements among industries, but in all periods changes in final demand and in input-output coefficients tended to reinforce each other. Increases in final demand for an industry's output tended to be accompanied by increases in demand for its product as intermediate input, and vice versa. Plastics, utilities, drugs, and computing machines showed increases for both final consumption and intermediate consumption, whereas such industries as coal, wooden containers, and leather products were of declining importance for both consumption and production.     

Learning in society

In an individual experimentation problem a decision maker learns only from his own experience. It is well known that an optimal experimentation strategy for such problems sometimes results in the best alternative being dropped altogether, which is the so-called “Rothschild effect.” Many experimentation problems of interest, however, involve learning from both individual experience and the experience of others. This paper shows that learning in society can overcome the Rothschild effect. We consider an economy with a continuum of infinitely lived players in which each player faces a multi-armed bandit and in each period a player observes the action choice of another randomly chosen player. We show that social conformity always happens in the long run, and we use this fact to derive a condition on the distribution of prior beliefs that implies that the fraction of players who choose the best alternative always converges to one in the long run.     

Some benefits of cyclical monetary policy

We show that modeling monetary circulation and cyclical activity offers insights about monetary policy that cannot be had in representative-agent models. Two fundamental ideas emerge: (i) the reflux of money back to the hands of those making current expenditures can be inefficient, and (ii) expansionary policy may accommodate more trade during high-demand seasons, at the expense of less trade in low-demand seasons and a less valuable currency. The paper provides a foundation for the optimality of a cyclical monetary policy. We thank Steve Williamson and, especially, an anonymous referee for helpful comments, as well as insightful discussions in presentations at the Cleveland Fed (2003), University of Iowa (2004), Queen’s University (2004), and more recently at the Chicago Fed, the New York Fed, the Institute of Advanced Studies, Simon Fraser University and the Universities of Vienna, British Columbia, and Victoria.     

Technical efficiency and returns to scale in Austrian commercial banking: 1987–1991

In a pooled time-series cross-section study covering the period 1987–1991, the technical efficiency of Austrian all-purpose banks is analysed. The sample covers banks of all size classes, among them the largest 18 banks as well as some of the very small banks. The empirical results show that local banks and nationwide operating banks are technically most efficient while regional banks are least efficient. Moreover, it can be shown that the technical efficiency of nationwide operating banks improved substantially in the period analysed relative to that of local and regional banks.I wish to thank an anonymous referee for his helpful comments. Financial support from the Vienna Chamber of Commerce is gratefully acknowledged.     

Report card on Sraffa at 100

Sraffa is lauded for (a) his magnificent editing of Ricardo's writings and (b) his 1960 classic on Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities. Regretted is the shortfall from his unlimited potential to his sparse bibliography of publications and oral lecturing, and his diffidence as an editor to interpret and criticize his classical heroes. Admired by Keynes and Wittgenstein and friend to the Marxist Antonio Gramsci, Piero was a much loved character. Because of, and not in spite of, the fact that he early lacked sympathy for the general equilibrium methodology and the mixed-economy ideology that dominated twentieth century mainstream economics, Sraffa was able to uniquely add value to the corpus of economic science.     

Hans Singer's debts to Schumpeter and Keynes

This essay discusses Hans Singer's intellectual formation andthe influences on his early writings and on his post-1947 developmenteconomics. It asks what impact the unusual experience of studyingwith both Schumpeter and Keynes had upon his subsequent economicthinking and practice. It argues that the influence of boththese mentors was surprisingly small, compared with that ofSpiethoff and Clark. Singer repaid his debts to Schumpeter andKeynes, but by working in the new currency of development economics,some of which was his own coinage. His motivation for this vasteffort was derived from the social egalitarianism of figuressuch as William Beveridge, Archbishop Temple and R. H. Tawney,rather than the liberalism of Schumpeter and Keynes.     

A sequential stochastic tree problem

We consider here the owner of a plot of land upon which he sequentially plants and harvests trees. The trees' growth paths follow a stochastic process, and the owner must decide when to harvest and replant, given knowledge of the process and each tree's growth history. The results of this analysis are compared with the non-repeated case derived by Brock, Rothschild and Stiglitz (1979) (hereafter B.R.S.) and found to be qualitatively similar.     

Capitalism Unleashed: Finance,Globalization, and Welfare

Andrew Glyn, who died from a brain tumour in December 2007, aged 64, had been a key figure in socialist political economy since the 1970s. His seminal book with Bob Sutcliffe, British Capitalism, Workers and the Profits Squeeze, published in 1972, inspired a generation of political economists. It offered an arresting empirical analysis of the predicament of British capitalism, and occasioned a fierce and wide-ranging debate among socialist economists over its empirical accuracy, its theoretical approach and its political implications. It was one of the first and most important expressions of Ricardian Marxism in the 1970s, emphasising the importance of distributional struggles for the future economic and political development of capitalism.

He was actively engaged in politics and he was always ready to put his intellectual skills to practical use, as during the British miners' strike in 1984–5, when he provided a detailed critical analysis of the economic case being advanced by the employers and the Government against the union. At the same time he sought to understand the trends that were shaping the development of capitalism, and wrote two very influential books, Capitalism Since World War II: the Making and Breakup of the Great Boom (1984, with Philip Armstrong and John Harrison), and Capital Unleashed (2006), his analysis of the recent neoliberal phase of capitalist development.

He will be remembered for his skills as a teacher, his humane and tolerant approach to intellectual debate, and his lasting contributions to our understanding of contemporary capitalism.     

Celso Furtado and the Myth of Economic Development: Rethinking Development from Exile

ABSTRACT

This article introduces two previously unpublished working papers by the Brazilian economist Celso Furtado (1920–2004). Following a brief outline of his life and ideas, the arguments in the two papers are examined, taking into account their context and place in Furtado’s evolving body of work. These two papers represent a crucial turning point in Furtado’s thinking, highlighting his critical perspective on (under)development and laying the basis for four books that he would publish in rapid sequence. We stress Furtado’s growing scepticism with the prospects for international development and global convergence, and his attempt to reimagine the meaning of development and the potential paths to development by peripheral countries. Furtado’s approach to global capitalism in these two papers shed an even more critical light on its structure and evolution than his better-known works from the 1950s. Finally, the contemporary relevance of his ideas is illustrated by reference to their relationship with the current heterodox literature.     

文学研究的绿色新视界:《徐霞客游记》的生态批评价值、旨趣与意义探讨

"能至"、"能言"、"能文",乃旅游的三大境界。"能至"方可"言"、"文"。在旅游体系中,"能至"处于基础地位,"能文"则是最高境界。笔耕,无异于我国明代地理学家与探险家徐霞客生命过程中不可剥离的一种存在形式。值此纪念徐霞客诞辰420周年之际,本文拟从生态批评的角度,根据自身对世界文学长廊中生态文学作品的比较和认识,挖掘与解读《徐霞客游记》体现的创作姿态,以及它在生态保护,唤醒人们的生态意识、生态良心等方面的价值。徐霞客这一作品的丰富性,同时足以促使我们反思我国当代生态文学的发展状况,为整个文学研究提供了新的视角、新的思路和新的方法,从而使作品本身具有更强的生命力。     

我国产业集聚的变迁与产业转移的可行性研究

产业集聚变迁是产业空间位置发生动态变化的过程。利用产业的赫芬达尔指数、区位商和产业的绝对份额三项指标相结合,观测其年度变化,以测度我国产业集聚的变迁。结果发现,从2000年开始,以纺织服装制造业为代表的劳动密集型产业开始由沿海地区向其他地区转移,并且在2004年以后呈现加速趋势;以通信设备、计算机及其他电子设备制造业为代表的资本技术密集型行业在2006年以前一直向沿海地区集中,直到2007年向其他地区转移才始露端倪。以"单位劳动成本"测度我国产业转移的可行性,发现我国中部地区有明显的劳动成本优势,西部地区具有承接劳动密集型产业的潜力,劳动密集型产业在我国具有发展的持续性和可能性。     

Three brief proofs of Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem

Summary. Arrows original proof of his impossibility theorem proceeded in two steps: showing the existence of a decisive voter, and then showing that a decisive voter is a dictator. Barbera replaced the decisive voter with the weaker notion of a pivotal voter, thereby shortening the first step, but complicating the second step. I give three brief proofs, all of which turn on replacing the decisive/pivotal voter with an extremely pivotal voter (a voter who by unilaterally changing his vote can move some alternative from the bottom of the social ranking to the top), thereby simplifying both steps in Arrows proof. My first proof is the most straightforward, and the second uses Condorcet preferences (which are transformed into each other by moving the bottom alternative to the top). The third proof proceeds by reinterpreting Step 1 of the first proof as saying that all social decisions are made the same way (neutrality).Received: 9 July 2001, Revised: 2 September 2004, JEL Classification Numbers: D7, D70, D71.John Geanakoplos: I wish to thank Ken Arrow, Chris Avery, Don Brown, Ben Polak, Herb Scarf, Chris Shannon, Lin Zhou, and especially Eric Maskin for very helpful comments and advice. I was motivated to think of reproving Arrows theorem when I undertook to teach it to George Zettler, a mathematician friend. After I presented this paper at MIT, a graduate student there named Luis Ubeda-Rives told me he had worked out the same neutrality argument as I give in my third proof while he was in Spain nine years ago. He said he was anxious to publish on his own and not jointly, so I encourage the reader to consult his forthcoming working paper. The proofs appearing here appeared in my 1996 CFDP working paper. Proofs 2 and 3 originally used Mays notation, which I have dropped on the advice of Chris Avery.     

Financial Instability and the Credit Crunch of 1966

In an article in this journal, Edwin Dickens criticizes the financial instability hypothesis of Hyman Minsky. He contends that ''financial instability theorists'' explain the financial crisis in the US in 1966 as due to the forced sale of securities by commercial banks, but that the 1966 crisis was not due to such sales. Therefore, he says that Minsky's financial instability hypothesis is contradicted. In contrast, this article argues that the 1966 crisis was initiated by the sale of securities by banks, but that such a development was not due to increased financial fragility, and thus was not a necessary aspect of the financial instability hypothesis. While the specifics of the 1966 crisis are somewhat of an exception, the general pattern of financial crisis in the postwar period in the US is powerfully explained by Minsky's financial instability hypothesis.     

Differentiating ambiguity: an expository note

Ghirardato et al. J Econ Theory 118:133–173, 2004 propose a method for distinguishing between perceived ambiguity and the decision-maker’s reaction to it. They study a general class of preferences which they refer to as invariant biseparable. This class includes CEU and MEU. This note presents some examples which illustrate their results. Research supported by ESRC grant no. RES-000-22-0650. For comments and discussion we would like to thank Klaus Nehring and a seminar audience at ESEM, Vienna 2006.     

American Labor and Europa's Recovery

On the morrow of President Truman's election the newspapers announced that the first person the President had received was the President of the powerful American syndical organisation known throughout the world under the name of C.I.Q. (Congress of Industrial Organizations). We know that this organisation as well as the other central organisation, the American Federation of Labour, had unequivocally taken up its stand in favour of Truman's candidacy. As the legislative elections had at the same time given the majority to the Democratic Party it was immediately declared on all hands that trade-unionism was going to exert considerable influence on American policy. These facts conferred a great importance on the memorandum addressed by Mr. Philipp Murray, in November 1947, to President Truman; a memorandum which was officially communicated by the C.I.O. to the International Trades Unions Conference for the recovery and reconstruction of Europe held in London on the 9th and 10th of March, 1948. We are especially pleased to put this document, which constitutes a declaration of principles of tie utmost interest, before the readers of the Annals.     

诺贝尔奖得主泽尔滕对杭州房地产泡沫的看法

杭州的房地产问题具有普通性,2005年3月和11月,诺贝尔经济学奖得主泽尔滕教授两次来华讲学.在华其间,他与其博士后高雷博士深入地探讨了杭州市房地产市场的泡沫问题.泽尔滕教授认为必须警惕杭州房地产市场泡沫,他注意到杭州房地产市场交易量的增长已落后于房价的增长.泽尔滕教授和高雷博士认为从众效应会促使房价一路攀升直至最后崩溃.对我国房地产市场存在的问题,他们提出了具体的政策建议,如放宽对利率的限制、完善房地产金融体系、改进房地产贷款和抵押政策、封堵境外投机资金等.