Why do entrepreneurs open tech startups? A comparative study between Brazilian and foreign enterprises

International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal - This research identifies and compares the reasons that lead entrepreneurs to open a startup in Brazil or abroad along six factors:...     

Corruption and industrial dualism in less developed countries

This paper provides an explanation for the observation that developing countries tend to have a higher degree of dualism in the size distribution of firms and a relatively smaller proportion of large firms than do developed countries. This paper builds a model where large 'formal' firms attract rent seeking activities from the government while small firms do not. In the model, there exists a 'competitive fringe' of small firms and a formal market consisting of Cournot competitors. The number of formal firms is made endogenous and is a function of the degree to which the government can extract rents. This ability to extract rents is itself posited as a function of the degree of corruption in a country's government. Thus, it is the high degree of corruption in developing country governments that contributes to the dual nature of their industrial structure. The model predicts that the higher the degree of corruption, the fewer (and larger) are the formal firms, the lower is social welfare and the greater is dead-weight loss, and the higher are government rents. An examination of the size distribution of 16 countries and their degree of corruption shows that the degree of corruption is a good predictor of the percentage of large firms in an economy.     

Success chess

Too many managers and executives play at the game of success rather than play a strategy to win. There are rules for effective career management that increase value to both the corporation and the individual.     

Anyone? Anyone? A Guide to Submissions on Classroom Experiments

The true method of knowledge is experiment. – William Blake     

Modeling resource depletion impacts—the Ogallalla aquifer study

The impact of declining groundwater irrigation in the six-state High Plains-Ogallala region of the U.S. was modeled with linked linear programming and input-output models. Several innovations were necessary to accomplish an interfacing of the two models in a forecasting structure. Depending on the assumptions, the impact of declining groundwater irrigation on the region ranged from moderate to substantial.     

Have Ethical Attitudes Changed? An Intertemporal Comparison of the Ethical Perceptions of College Students in 1985 and 2001

Recent ethical breeches by corporate governorsat the highest levels have called into questionwhether ethical attitudes have changed sincethe Corporate Raider scandals of the mid-1980s. We exploit a unique opportunity to follow-up ona previous investigation of college students inthe mid-1980s to analyze this question. Usinga similar survey instrument, we find thatstudents surveyed in 2001 are significantlyless accepting of the ethically questionablesituations in seven of 15 scenarios and moreaccepting in only one. Seven scenarios showedno significant change. We conclude that,overall, ethical attitudes of students in 2001appear to have become higher over time. To theextent that current students are futurebusiness leaders, we find these results to beencouraging for the long term.     

Legal Doctrine and Political Control

We model legal doctrine as an instrument of political controlby higher courts over lower courts and the case outcomes theyproduce. We focus on the choice between determinate and indeterminatedoctrines within a hierarchy of courts where political–ideologicalalignment between lower and higher courts varies. We show thatthe choice over doctrinal determinacy depends on the distributionof cases, the distribution of litigants, judicial types, andthe level of policy alignment between higher and lower courtjudges. The model suggests the optimal doctrinal choice fora high court, given the political–ideological alignmentbetween the high court and the lower court, the control characteristicsof doctrines themselves, and the matching of doctrines to litigantpools. This has implications regarding preference divergencewithin the judicial hierarchy, the interaction of differentdoctrines, and interplay between doctrinal specificity and doctrinalreach.     

The supermobile

The supermobile whose expectations are so gross that he cannot endure the hardship of staying long enough on a job to become competent represents the defect inherent in a mobile society. Whether he stays or leaves, he will make problems for himself and for others.     

The failure-prone executive

Others may single out an executive to be the target of an attack, but the failure-prone executive makes himself the victim of that attack.