Age-specific entrepreneurship and PAYG: Public pensions in Germany

We present new empirical evidence on the distribution of earnings, income and wealth among entrepreneurs in Germany. We document that both earnings and income are more concentrated among entrepreneurs than among workers and describe a large-scale overlapping-generations model that replicates the age-earnings profiles of these two household types. As an application, we compute the equilibrium effects of a reform of the German pay-as-you-go pension system in which entrepreneurs must also contribute and receive a pension. We show that in the presence of mobility between workers and entrepreneurs, the expected lifetime utility of all newborn households unanimously declines due to the general equilibrium effects of lower aggregate savings, and welfare losses amount to approximately 0.7% of total consumption. In addition, the integration of self-employed workers into the social security system in Germany does not help to improve its fiscal sustainability, and only an increase in the retirement age to 70 years will help to finance pensions at the present level beyond the year 2050.     

The aggregate gains of eliminating gender and ethnic gaps in the Malaysian labor market

We use microdata to calculate the gains of eliminating gender and ethnic labor market gaps in Malaysia for the period 2010–2017. We document significant gaps in terms of participation in the labor market and entrepreneurship, distinguishing between employers and self-employed. Female-male ratios are 64% for labor market participation, 82% for self-employment, and 32% for being employers. Across different age and ethnic groups, gender gaps in labor force participation are particularly pronounced for older workers and in entrepreneurship for Chinese workers. Our results indicate substantial income gains if gender and ethnic gaps were eliminated. Eliminating the entrepreneurship gender gaps increases income per capita by 6.54% in the long run. When we also include the employment gender gap, the long-run gains are 26.18%. The elimination of ethnic gaps could in the long run result in a smaller but still sizeable increase in income per capita of 11.5%.     

An in-depth analysis of the entrepreneurship of rural Chinese mothers and the digital inclusive finance

Rural mothers' entrepreneurial behavior is critical to promoting inclusive rural economic development. However, these women are constrained by family responsibilities, economic substandard and severe financial exclusion. Fortunately, the development of digital inclusive finance has successfully broken such exclusions, thus allowing entrepreneur mothers to achieve some financial success. Applying the 2017 China General Social Survey and the Peking University Digital Inclusive Finance Index, this paper explores the impact of digital inclusive finance on rural mothers' entrepreneurship and the transmission mechanism using the Probit model. In fact, due to digital inclusive finance, rural mothers' entrepreneurship increased by 4.6%. In addition, this paper finds the impact of this digital inclusive finance on entrepreneurship, in general, is more significant on mothers in less developed areas and with high levels of education than on those in developed regions and with low levels of education. Meanwhile, using the transmission mechanism for analysis, the paper found the role of digital inclusive finance in inciting entrepreneurship among rural mothers. This mainly comes through two channels: the gender equality effect and the information learning effect.     

“创而不业”为哪般？象征性创业形成机理研究——基于扎根理论的分析

创业活动日益活跃的同时，“创而不业”现象也随之增多，此类创业与传统意义上的创业在行为表现、创业动机等方面有本质的区别，但未引起学术界足够重视。基于此，运用扎根理论选取13个案例，探讨象征性创业类型、形成路径与机理。研究发现：①象征性创业与实质性创业行为表现差异源于创业动机不同，后者追求创业的实质意义，即通过机会识别与开发实现价值创造，而前者则是在象征意义驱动下的行为选择；②根据外部诱因与动机不同，象征性创业具体细分为传染型、策略型和表演型3类，可分别采用社会比较理论、信息不对称理论和印象管理理论加以解释；③3类象征性创业形成机理存在显著差异。其中，传染型创业是由同群创业唤醒负面情绪而引发的模仿行为，其主要目的是修复心理落差，策略型创业是利用信息优势进行政策“套利”的一种手段，表演型创业则是为缓解社会规范压力而开展的印象管理行为。研究结论为深化创业动机研究和理解创业行为差异提供了参考依据。     

人口老龄化与区域创业水平——基于启信宝创业大数据的研究

本文首次基于启信宝大数据获得我国各城市创业数据,同时利用人口推演模型获得各城市人口老龄化数据,利用计划生育政策作为工具变量建立起二者之间的因果识别。本文发现,老年人口抚养比每上升1%,城市创业企业数量将下降10%左右,具有显著的经济意义。本文在宏观和微观两个层面进行了丰富的机制检验,发现同时存在家庭内部的“养老压力”机制和家庭外部的“等级效应”机制,这两条机制分别揭示家庭内部人口老龄化和家庭外部人口老龄化对个体创业行为的影响。整体而言,本文工作补充了人口老龄化与创业的相关研究,也为制定创业和人口政策提供参考。     

2022年第7期创业失败、再创业决策与再创业绩效

基于2010-2018年中国家庭追踪调查（CFPS）数据，文章实证研究了创业失败对再创业活动的影响。研究结果表明：相较于未曾创业失败的家庭，有过创业失败经历的家庭进行创业的概率高于前者4.09%，创业绩效高出前者4.83%，并且创业失败家庭再次创业时会投入更多资产与家庭劳动力。使用每年度排除样本自身后的区县级创业失败率作为工具变量，克服潜在的内生性问题后，上述结论依然成立。异质性分析发现，创业失败对再创业活动的影响在农村家庭中更为明显，并且这种影响仅在东北地区不显著。此外，文章从失败学习、社会资本、人力资本与个人努力四个角度考察了创业失败影响再创业绩效的可能机制。在当前创业失败率较高的背景下，文章结论有助于厘清创业失败与再创业活动间的关系，为进一步完善失败再创业政策支持体系、优化创业资源配置提供经验依据。     

科技社团助力“双创”和“科创中国”分析——以泉州纺织服饰产业新型研发平台为例

在国家“双创”战略背景下，为深入贯彻习近平总书记关于统筹疫情防控和经济社会发展的重要指示，中国科协以促进科技经济深度融合为目标，开展“科创中国”工作。通过对科技社团促进科技经济融合的分析和实地调研，认为中国纺织工程学会参与建立的“一馆一院两中心”泉州纺织服饰产业综合公共服务平台，有力地支持了地方纺织服饰企业创新转型升级，是一种有效的产学研融合的组织机制，作为新型研发组织，其经验值得借鉴推广。     

Venture capital financing in the eSports industry

We examine the drivers of venture capital financing raised by eSports companies, using the Crunchbase database containing information on private and public companies receiving any type of venture capital funding worldwide. We find that companies located in Asia-Pacific and Americas attract more funding than in Europe. Venture capital funds are more likely to fund late stage and older companies, than innovative early stage and younger firms. We also observe that the founders’ previous experience plays a significant role in explaining the level of funding. Companies with at least one founder with previous eSport, managerial or start-up experience are more likely to get more funding by venture capital funds. Our research provides new evidence on how venture capital funding is allocated between late stage and early stage firms as well as between older and younger companies in the eSport-industry and in different markets.     

The story and the storyteller: Strategic storytelling that gets human attention for entrepreneurs

As a captivating way to engage, inform, and persuade one’s audiences, storytelling can serve as a strategic skill in an entrepreneur’s arsenal. Although entrepreneurs often use storytelling to mobilize financial resources from external stakeholders, less attention has been paid to how entrepreneurs can leverage this powerful tool to gain strategic partnerships. As such, there is little practical guidance on utilizing storytelling to gain a competitive advantage. In this article, we use wisdom from the academic and practical world to illuminate the science of storytelling, identify the type of stories that entrepreneurs may narrate (or refrain from telling), and understand the mechanism through which stories engage and persuade external stakeholders. We also highlight Freytag’s Dramatic Arc, which can teach entrepreneurs how to frame profound stories that gain attention from external stakeholders. We offer practical guidelines for entrepreneurs interested in learning and harnessing the power of compelling storytelling for strategic partnerships.     

Entrepreneur’s incentives for risk-taking and short-term debt

We investigate the effects of short-term debt for entrepreneur’s incentives for risk-taking. To do so, we develop a model by introducing short-term debt and financing frictions into the entrepreneur framework. The more risk-averse entrepreneur overestimates the liquidity risk and undervalues the private equity, leading to higher incentives for risk-taking. Short-term debt mitigates the risk-shifting problem induced by the entrepreneur’s preference while generating additional risk-taking incentives via rollover risk. We consequently challenge the view of Seta et al. (2020) by predicting a trade-off between the two effects of short-term debt for entrepreneurs, offering a new perspective to harmonize the existing arguments.