The salient role of institutions in Women’s entrepreneurship: a critical review and agenda for future research

Institutions play an important role in women’s and men’s entrepreneurial behaviors. This article provides a systematic review of institutions and women’s entrepreneurship literature through an institutional lens, with a particular focus on informal and formal institutions. The article sets out to explore institutions for women’s entrepreneurship, illustrating why having an institutional perspective of women’s entrepreneurship contributes to a deeper understanding of the phenomenon. To reach this aim, we analyze and classify the scholarship by explanatory factors and type of informal and formal institutions. The article suggests that gender roles, as an informal institution, influence the creation of both informal and formal institutions, and in turn, the women’s entrepreneurial behaviors is based on gender roles. Finally, a theoretical model is developed, which allocates women’s entrepreneurship in the center and shows the role of institutional environment in their decision to start new ventures. Implications for future research are finally discussed.     

To wind a skein into a ball: exploring the concept and measures of public network performance

Since Provan and Milward’s article in 1995, a wide variety of conceptualizations and measures of network performance has been proposed. The lack of consensus among scholars generated a confusing landscape. In an attempt to wind a skein into a ball, our paper aims to synthesize the conceptualizations and measures of network performance proposed by the existing literature and explore their statistical and theoretical relationships. Structural equation modelling techniques were used for this purpose.     

The new public corruption: Old questions for new challenges

This paper focuses on corruption in public procurement. It describes the contemporary face of corruption by investigating the role of public accountability in the fight against corruption. The paper describes a specific episode of corruption relative to the awarding of government contracts for big events, such as the celebration of the 150th anniversary of Italian unification. Relying on the philosophical insights of Rousseau, Popper, Kant and others, the study suggests the need for enabling a democratic control and constructing a public ethics for the common good.     

Competition and Scope of Activities in Financial Services

This article analyzes the costs and benefits of different degreesof competition and different configurations of permissible activitiesin the financial sector and discusses the related implicationsfor regulation and supervision. Theory and experience demonstratethe importance of competition for efficiency and confirm thata competitive environment requires a contestable system—meaningone that is open to competition—but not necessarily alarge number of institutions. A competitive banking system canimprove the distribution of consumer credit, enhance the corporatesector's access to financing, and mitigate the risks of financialcrises. In an open market, in which services and products areprovided in response to market signals, financial institutionsrespond by offering a wider scope of financial services. Theoptimal institutional design for supervisory functions is lessobvious.      

Re-estimating gender differences in income in South Africa: The implications of equivalence scales

Most studies of poverty and inequality in South Africa measure individual welfare by deflating total household resources, such as income, by household size. This per-capita method makes no adjustments for the different consumption needs of children or for household economies of scale. However, in addition to being more likely to live in households where average per-capita household income is lower compared with men, we show that women in South Africa also live in significantly larger households which include more children. These gendered differences in household composition are driven to a large degree by low rates of co-residency between men and women. We therefore investigate how adjusting household resources for the presence of children and economies of scale affects measures of the gender gap in income.     

Expected future earnings,taxation, and university enrollment

Taxation changes the expectations of prospective university students about their future level and uncertainty of after-tax income. To estimate the impact of taxes on university enrollment, we estimate a structural microeconometric model, in which a high-school graduate decides to enter university studies if expected lifetime utility from this choice is greater than that anticipated from starting to work right away. We estimate the ex-ante future paths of the expectation and variance of after-tax income for German high-school graduates, accounting for nonrandom selection. The enrollment model takes into account university dropout and unemployment risks. Consistently with expectations, the estimation results indicate that higher expected returns to a tertiary education increase the probability of university enrollment, whereas higher uncertainty among graduates decreases enrollment rates. A simulation based on the estimated model indicates that a revenue-neutral, flat-rate tax reform with an unchanged basic tax allowance would increase enrollment rates for men in Germany.     

Smoking Habits: Like Father,Like Son,Like Mother,Like Daughter?*

We use instrumental variable methods to investigate whether the impact of parental smoking habits on their children's smoking decisions is a causal one. We find suggestive evidence of same‐sex role models in two‐parent households: mothers play a more crucial role in determining their daughters’ smoking decisions, whereas fathers’ smoking habits are primarily imitated by their sons. This same‐sex parent–child link is no longer at play for teenagers living in single‐mother households, for whom the influence of their only cohabiting parent turns out to be predominant independently of gender.