Language skills and migrant entrepreneurship: evidence from China

Business ownership constitutes a vital part of the economy. While many of the determinants of entrepreneurship have been intensively studied, the link between language proficiency and entrepreneurship has not. Using the Migrant Dynamics Monitoring Survey, this paper studies the importance of language skills for migrant entrepreneurship. We find that migrants who can understand and fluently speak the local dialect are more likely to become entrepreneurs. The effect of language on entrepreneurship is more pronounced in the urban fringe, towns, and rural areas, and especially where individuals migrate across different dialectal regions. Gaining local dialect skills influences positively the decision to become either a necessity- or an opportunity-driven entrepreneur.

     

Scale economies and superstore retailing: new evidence from the UK

Economies of scale related to store size have been recognised in retailing for many years. However, empirical evidence from the research literature has been patchy and focusses mainly on labour productivity. This paper describes recent investigations carried out amongst UK superstore retailers. Difficulties in quantifying economies of scale are acknowledged, and much of the evidence presented is qualitative in nature. Nevertheless, economies of scale with store size are shown to occur in two ways: through proportional reductions in retailer costs, including labour, goods delivery and store operation; and through increased store loyalty and customer expenditure per visit. Implications for further research are discussed.     

On the geography of the new economy: perspectives from the United States

The phrase ‘new economy’ has recently become embraced by the federal statistical establishment in the United States. The rise in productivity levels in the US economy in the 1990s has been increasingly associated with particular industries and types of capital goods, which have been found to enhance the overall productivity of the national economy. This paper documents the regional distribution of industries considered to be critical in this new phase in US economic history. The federal statistical agencies have identified key sectors associated with this change in the national trajectory of production, and information-technology-related sectors are at the core of these definitions. In particular, IT-producing and IT-using industries are viewed as critical to the development of the new economy. This analysis finds the IT-producing industries are more unevenly distributed than the IT-using industries. Over the 1990–1997 time period, the IT-producing industries became more unevenly distributed, while IT-using industries exhibited a pattern of in-fill, growing more rapidly in regions with weak concentration of these industries in 1990.     

Economies of scale,cost minimization and productivity in telecom markets under economic crisis: evidence from Greece

Telecommunications has entered a new age of development with advanced technology and increased competition with established players. The main focus of telecom operators is to maintain and increase their market shares by creating a loyal customer base and technology advancements. However, it remains difficult for telecom operators to evaluate their performance and competence within a fast-changing environment, especially since the telecom business is complex and involves unknown trade-offs. The current study proposes a series of methods in order to evaluate the performance of telecommunication companies, using as a case study the Hellenic Telecommunications Organization (OTE). OTE’s importance lies on its role as one of the leading companies in Greece affecting the economy. On the methodological side, this paper applies the linear regression analysis to measure and evaluate the performance of OTE. The results show that during the period 2005-2015 there are events which affect the operation of OTE and create conditions for cost optimization which are of great importance and they determine the future evolution of the organization. The results of this study are expected to be utilized as guidelines for the telecom operators as well as for regulators and decision makers in general.     

Trade, wages, and the political economy of trade protection: evidence from the Colombian trade reforms

Worker industry affiliation plays a crucial role in how trade policy affects wages in many trade models. Yet, most research has focused on how trade policy affects wages by altering the economy-wide returns to a specific worker characteristic (i.e., skill or education) rather than through worker industry affiliation. This paper exploits drastic trade liberalizations in Colombia in the 1980s and 1990s to investigate the relationship between protection and industry wage premiums. We relate wage premiums to trade policy in an empirical framework that accounts for the political economy of trade protection. Accounting for time-invariant political economy factors is critical. When we do not control for unobserved time-invariant industry characteristics, we find that workers in protected sectors earn less than workers with similar observable characteristics in unprotected sectors. Allowing for industry fixed effects reverses the result: trade protection increases relative wages. This positive relationship persists when we instrument for tariff changes. Our results are in line with short- and medium-run models of trade where labor is immobile across sectors or, alternatively, with the existence of industry rents that are reduced by trade liberalization. In the context of the current debate on the rising income inequality in developing countries, our findings point to a source of disparity beyond the well-documented rise in the economy-wide skill premium: because tariff reductions were proportionately larger in sectors employing a high fraction of less-skilled workers, the decrease in the wage premiums in these sectors affected such workers disproportionately.     

Learning and knowledge diffusion in a global economy

I develop a dynamic general equilibrium model to understand how multinationals affect host countries through knowledge diffusion. Workers in the model learn from their managers and knowledge diffusion takes place through worker mobility. Unlike in a model without learning, I present a novel mechanism through which an integrated equilibrium represents a Pareto improvement for the host country. I go on to explore other dynamic consequences of integration. The entry of multinationals makes the lifetime earning profiles of host country workers steeper. At the same time, if agents learn fast enough, integration creates unequal opportunities, thereby widening inequality. The ex-workers of foreign multinationals also found new firms which are, on average, larger than the largest firms under autarky.     

New business formation in a rapidly growing economy: the Irish experience

The extraordinary growth of the Irish economy since the mid-1990s—the ‘Celtic Tiger’—has attracted a great deal of interest, commentary and research. Indeed, many countries look to Ireland as an economic development role model, and it has been suggested that Ireland might provide key lessons for other EU members as they seek to achieve the objectives set out in the Lisbon Agenda. Much of the discussion of Ireland’s growth has focused on its possible triggers: the long-term consequences of the late 1980s fiscal stabilisation, EU structural funds, education, wage moderation and devaluation of the Irish punt. The industrial policy perspective has highlighted the importance of inflows of foreign direct investment, but a notable absence from the discourse on the ‘Celtic Tiger’ has been any mention of the role of new business venture creation and entrepreneurship. In this paper we use unpublished Irish VAT data for the years 1988–2004 to provide the first detailed look at national trends in business birth and death rates in Ireland over the ‘take-off’ period. We also use sub-national VAT data to shed light on spatial trends in new venture creation. Our overall conclusions are that new business formation made no detectable contribution to the acceleration of Ireland’s growth in the late 1990s, although we do find evidence of spatial convergence in per capita business stocks.     

A model for evaluating the effectiveness of middle managers' training courses: evidence from a major banking organization in Greece

Contemporary management thinking embraces the organizational training theory that sustainable success rests, to a great extent, upon a systematic evaluation of training interventions. However, the evidence indicates that few organizations take adequate steps to assess and analyse the quality and outcomes of their training. The authors seek to develop the existing literature on training evaluation by proposing a new model, specific to management training, which might encourage more and better evaluation by practitioners. Their thesis is that training evaluation is best if it can be based on criteria derived from the objectives of the training and they draw on the management effectiveness literature to inform their proposed model. The study seeks to examine the effect of six evaluation levels – reactions, learning, job behaviour, job performance, organizational team performance and some wider, societal effects – in measuring training interventions with regard to the alterations to learning, transfer and organizational impact. The model was tested with data obtained from 190 middle managers employed by a large banking organization in Greece and the results suggest that there is considerable consistency in the evaluation framework specified. The paper discusses these results and draws conclusions about their practical implications. The study's limitations are considered and some future research needs identified.     

You get what you give: theory and evidence of reciprocity in the sharing economy

We develop an analytical framework of peer interaction in the sharing economy that incorporates reciprocity, the tendency to increase (decrease) effort in response to others’ increased (decreased) effort. In our model, buyers (sellers) can induce sellers (buyers) to exert more effort by behaving well themselves. We demonstrate that this joint increased effort can improve the utility of both parties and influence the market equilibrium. We also show that bilateral reputation systems, which allow both buyers and sellers to review each other, are more responsive to reciprocity than unilateral reputation systems. By rewarding reciprocal behavior, bilateral reputation systems generate trust among strangers and informally regulate their behavior. We test the predictions of our model using data from Airbnb, a popular peer-to-peer accommodation platform. We show that Airbnb hosts that are more reciprocal receive higher ratings and that higher rated hosts can increase their prices. Therefore, reciprocity affects equilibrium prices on Airbnb through its impact on ratings, as predicted by our analytical framework.     

The effect of institutional isomorphic pressure on the internationalization of firms in an emerging economy: evidence from China

This study uses institutional theory to explore the driving force for internationalization of firms in emerging economies. It posits that the internationalization practices of firms are driven not only by efficiency consideration, but also by the desire to conform to institutional isomorphic pressures exerted by the social environment. The impact of three types of institutional isomorphic pressures – coercive pressure, mimetic pressure and normative pressure – on the intensity of internationalization is investigated. Analysis using survey data collected from 174 Chinese firms shows that all three institutional pressures have positive and significant effects on the intensity of internationalization. We also examine the interaction between institutional pressure and firm capability. Results suggest that firm capabilities enhance the effect of coercive pressure on internationalization, and weaken the effect of normative pressure on internationalization.     

Health insurance and the supply of entrepreneurs: new evidence from the affordable care act

Is the difficulty of purchasing health insurance as an individual or small business a major barrier to entrepreneurship in the USA? I answer this question by taking advantage of the natural experiment provided by the Affordable Care Act’s dependent coverage mandate, which allowed many 19–25 year olds to acquire health insurance independently of their employment. Using a difference-in-difference strategy, I find that the dependent coverage mandate did not increase self-employment among young adults overall, but increased self-employment among disabled young adults by 19–23%.     

Job generation and new and small firms: Some evidence from the late 1980s

This paper adopts a components of employment change methodology and examines the process of job generation in the late 1980s for three contrasting regions of the United Kingdom. The emphasis in the analysis is on the contribution of new and small firms to regional manufacturing employment growth. The results indicate the important role of new and small indigenous firms in the job generation process, particularly in Northern Ireland, in the period 1986–90. However, the level of displacement associated with these job creations is sufficiently high to cause concern about the longterm sustainability of these trends. The paper concludes by arguing that policies designed to stimulate new firm formation and small firm growth are not in themselves sufficient to promote growth.     

Entrepreneurs in the new economy: Immigration and sex effects in the Montreal metropolitan area

The recent literature on women’s entrepreneurship shows that they are underrepresented in the main stream economy when compared to their male counterparts, a phenomenon typically observed in other urban contexts. Approximately 30% of the entrepreneurs in the Montreal metropolitan area are women, active in a variety of sectors of the general economy. Their underrepresentation is still greater in the new economy, that is, those sectors that are knowledge-based and/or specialized in information technologies and communications. In this article, we examine the place of female entrepreneurs in the larger economy and in the new economy as related to their immigrant and/or ethnic origins. We seek in this paper to establish a comparative analysis of the situation of women entrepreneurs in immigrant-origin groups, focusing our attention on both the presence of women in entrepreneurial positions and the differential impact associated with membership in an immigrant-origin group. Based on data derived from Scott's Directory of 2007, we first determined an operational definition of the new economy and then analyzed the data from the perspective of sex and ethnic/immigrant origin. New economy enterprises represent approximately 12% of businesses in the Montreal metropolitan area, the majority of which are of the knowledge-based variety, and there is a relative, statistically significant absence of women from such enterprises. At the same time, there is a significantly greater presence of women drawn from minority groups, that is, from groups other than the Anglo-Canadian and French-Canadian dominant groups.     

Firm formation with heterogeneous management and labor skills

When both management skills and labor skills differ in the population, the nature of firm formation can differ radically from the equilibrium we are used to dealing with: The best potential managers could end up as wage workers. This happens when managerial skills are positively correlated with working skills, and there is some empirical evidence that this is indeed the case.     

Consumers in transition from the centrally planned economy to the market economy

The article describes the development of consumption and the key consumer policy issues which stem from the transition of Central and East European economies from regimes of central planning to those of market economy. The author analyzes the role of the consumers in the evolution of the communist economies. His conclusion is that maintaining consumption at or below subsistence level (massive starvation was common) was one of the major sources of financing the USSR socialist industrialization under Stalin. This was not possible in the East European people's democracies and, after Stalin's death, in the USSR. Repressed inflation (permanent shortages of consumption goods) and foreign debt became new sources of financing growth in the later stages of the development of the communist economies, a development which caused a permanent disequilibrium leading to negative economic growth and massive popular revolt. The transition to the market economy makes it necessary to address these disequilibrium problems. Two transition strategies are discussed: gradual transition and shock treatment therapy. These strategies give rise to different consumer problems and to different sets of issues facing the consumer movement.

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Konsumenten im Übergang von der Planwirtschaft zur Marktwirtschaft

Zusammenfassung Der Beitrag beschreibt, wie sich der private Verbrauch beim Übergang von einer zentral geplanten Wirtschaft zu einer Marktwirtschaft in den osteuropäischen Staaten entwickelt und welche verbraucherpolitischen Aufgaben sich dabei ergeben.Der Autor beschäftigt sich mit der Rolle der Konsumenten in der Entwicklung der kommunistischen Gesellschaften in der UdSSR und in den östlichen Staaten Mitteleuropas. Er kommt zu dem Ergebnis, daß die Begrenzung des Verbrauches auf das Existenzminimum oder auf ein Niveau darunter (massive Hungersnöte waren verbreitet) ursprünglich eine der wichtigsten Quellen war, aus denen das Programm der sozialistischen Industrialisierung in der UdSSR unter Stalin finanziert wurde. Dieses Modell einer industriellen Entwicklung ließ sich in den anderen europäischen kommunistischen Staaten nicht durchführen und war nach Stalins Tod auch in der UdSSR nicht mehr möglich. In der Folgezeit wurden eine unterdrückte Inflation in der Form von dauerhafter Knapphiet von Konsumgütern und wachsende Auslandsschulden neue Quellen für die Finanzierung des industriellen Wachstums — eine Entwicklung, die ihre eigenen Ziele auf Dauer nicht erreichen konnte. Sie führte gegen Ende der 80iger Jahre zu negativen Wachstumsraten, zu massiver Unzufriedenheit in der Bevölkerung, zu sehr ernsthaften Umweltproblemen und zu riesigen Auslandsschulden. Versuche, die kommunistischen Volkswirtschaften zu reformieren ohne Veränderung der politischen und ideologischen Grundlagen, schlugen völlig fehl.Der Beitrag diskutiert zwei Strategien für den Übergang in das neue Wirtschaftssystem. Die eine ist der ungarische Weg eines allmählichen Überganges mit der Fortsetzung der Reformen, die noch unter kommunistischer Herrschaft begonnen wurden, und der allmählichen Öffnung für die Kräfte des Marktes. Die andere ist die polnische Form einer Schocktherapie mit abrupter völliger Öffnung gegenüber den Kräften des Marktes. Beide Strategien führen zu jeweils verschiedenen Verbraucherproblemen mit unterschiedlichen Anforderungen an die Verbraucherpolitik.

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Andrzej K. Kozminski is Professor and Chair of the Department of Management and Organization in the School of Management of Warsaw University, Director of the Warsaw University Postgraduate International Management Center, and President of the International Business School, Nowy Swiat 4, 00-497 Warsaw, Poland.     

The contribution of vocational training to employment,job‐related skills and productivity: evidence from Madeira

In this paper, we analyse the transition to the labor market of participants in vocational training in Madeira in Portugal. The analysis is in two stages. First, we investigate how the employment status at different dates (1 month, 1 year, and 2 years after the completion of the training program) depends on relevant variables, such as age, gender, education and the content and duration of the training. Second, we use individuals' self‐assessment of the effectiveness of the training program along three dimensions: employment, job‐related skills and productivity. The respondents score training activities high on every dimension. Moreover, we find that training is more effective among the educated, indicating that vocational training is far from being remedial. We also find that long training programs and training related to tourism are particularly effective.     

责任领袖领跑新经济时代“责任领袖”——新经济时代的商业领跑者分论坛综述

“责任”可以创造引领发展的竞争力。随着可持续发展逐渐成为一种引领成功的商业模式，越来越多的企业将企业社会责任纳入企业发展的战略当中。在不断获得商业成功的同时，也更积极地带动各利益相关方履责实践，真正成为了责任的传播者，新商业大潮中的责任领袖。     

A new view of shareholder voting in the nineteenth century: evidence from Brazil,England and France

Business corporations in the nineteenth century often imposed limits on the voting rights of large shareholders. Economic historians have generally interpreted these voting restrictions as a contractual mechanism designed to protect small shareholders in a legal environment that afforded insufficient investor protection. This dominant account, however, fails to explain the variation in the incidence of voting restrictions across different industries and firm ownership structures, as well as their eventual disappearance from corporate charters over time. In this Article, we advance an alternative interpretation for these early voting schemes as efforts at consumer protection employed primarily by firms that were local service monopolies and collectively owned by their principal customers, none of whom wished the firm to come under the exclusive control of their competitors or of profit-maximising investors. We explore and test this proposition by analysing data on shareholder voting rights in the nineteenth century in Brazil, England, and France.