The impact of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurship skills and motivation

This paper analyzes the impact of a leading entrepreneurship education program on college students’ entrepreneurship skills and motivation using an instrumental variables approach in a difference-in-differences framework. We exploit that the program was offered to students at one location of a school but not at another location of the same school. Location choice (and thereby treatment) is instrumented by the relative distance of locations to parents’ place of residence. The results show that the program does not have the intended effects: the effect on students’ self-assessed entrepreneurial skills is insignificant and the effect on the intention to become an entrepreneur is even negative.     

Optimal personal bankruptcy design under moral hazard

In this paper, we develop a normative theory of unsecured consumer credit and personal bankruptcy based on the optimal trade-off between incentives and insurance. First, in order to characterize this trade-off, we solve a dynamic moral hazard problem in which agents' private effort decisions influence the life-cycle profiles of their earnings. We then show how the optimal allocation of individual effort and consumption can be implemented in a market equilibrium in which (i) agents and intermediaries repeatedly trade secured and unsecured debt instruments, and (ii) agents obtain (restricted) discharge of their unsecured debts in bankruptcy. The structure of this equilibrium and the associated restrictions on debt discharge closely match the main qualitative features of personal credit markets and bankruptcy law that actually exist in the United States.     

An agency theory of the bankruptcy law

What is the purpose of bankruptcy law? Existing views focus on the need of coordinating creditors' conflicting claims. In this paper the authors argue that the bankruptcy law helps reduce agency costs in financially distressed firms by forcing managers to disclose information on the viability of the firm. The authors' theory explains a number of empirical observations of financial distress that cannot easily be explained by existing theories of bankruptcy law.     

论我国破产重整程序存在的问题——以英国法为视角

我国2006年颁布的《企业破产法》首次引入了重整制度,试图给陷入财务困境又有重生希望的企业提供一个法律保障机制。但实践中重整程序应用的不多且条文本身也存在着各种问题。在制度设计上,如程序的启动、自动冻结的效果、破产管理人权利的分配、法院的介入以及强制裁定权的运用等方面存在着缺陷。英国公司重整制度自上世纪八十年代以来进行了多次重大修改,其制度的改革和完善给我国立法者提供了很多启示。     

The impact of the judiciary on entrepreneurship: Evaluation of Pakistan's “Access to Justice Programme”

In 2002, the Pakistani government implemented a judicial reform that cost $350 million or 0.1% of Pakistan's 2002 GDP. This reform did not involve increased incentives for judges to improve efficiency but merely provided them with more training. Nonetheless, the reform had dramatic effects on judicial efficiency and consequently on entrepreneurship: judges disposed of a quarter more cases and entry rate of new firms increased by half due to the reform. Using data from the World Bank Group Entrepreneurship Database, our estimates suggest that this translates into an increase of Pakistan's GDP by 0.5%.     

The efficient-markets hypothesis and entrepreneurship

The author thanks D.S. Ball, C.P. Jones, M.L. Walden, Murray Rothbard, J.W. Wilson, and several anonymousReview of Austrian Economics reviewers for helpful comments and suggestions.     

The battle for the essence of entrepreneurship

Nicolai Foss and Peter Klein have penned a most remarkable book on the theory of the firm. They offer a rich analysis of the economic organization through the lenses of various approaches including Austrian economics and neo-institutional economics. Their work is a welcome addition to the field of entrepreneurship studies, as it focuses on the role of entrepreneurship within established organizations. While I embrace most of the authors’ conclusions, I disagree with a central piece of their analysis: The rejection of the Kirznerian framework. In establishing judgment as the fundamental explanans of the theory of entrepreneurship, Foss and Klein introduce the bias of seeing entrepreneurship as allocating resources in firms. Moreover, introducing the process of judgment does not offer new insights that cannot be obtained through Kirznerian discovery analysis. Fundamentally, the essence of entrepreneurship is at stake. And it is not a debate about semantics. It is my contention that Israel Kirzner offers a more fundamental theory of entrepreneurship — one that can be applied within and beyond the realm of the firm, and that helps us explain social change, market processes, development, and growth.     

Dynamics of demographic development and its impact on personal saving: case of Japan

A dynamic model of the demographic structure of Japan is summarized. It is capable of tracing the dynamic development of the Japanese population, including the distribution of families by age, sex, and marital status of the head, as well as by the number and age of children and other dependents. This model is combined with specification of the processes generating family income and consumption, and then used to generate the pattern of aggregate income, saving and asset accumulation for the period 1985–2050 under alternative fertility assumptions. The results suggest that the saving-income ratio for Japan will increase slightly in the immediate future as the number of children per family declines sharply, and then falls moderately as the proportion of older persons in the population increases. Qualitative results depend critically on the labour force participation rate of older persons and on the probability of older persons merging into younger households.     

The effect of competence exploration and competence exploitation on strategic entrepreneurship

Strategic entrepreneurship captures firms’ efforts to simultaneously excel at opportunity seeking and advantage seeking. But little research exists into mechanisms that might facilitate strategic entrepreneurship. Drawing on the twin concepts of competence exploration and competence exploitation, we study their effects on strategic entrepreneurship. Theoretically, the entrepreneurial components of strategic entrepreneurship (an entrepreneurial mindset and creating innovation) should benefit from competence exploration while its strategic components (managing resources strategically and executing competitive advantages) should benefit from competence exploitation, but not vice-versa. Our findings, however, suggest that this theoretical dichotomy does not hold up in practice.     

Effects of main bank switching on new business bankruptcy

This paper examines the effects of main bank switching on the probability of bankruptcy of new small businesses using a propensity score matching estimation approach. We use a unique firm-level dataset of approximately 1,000 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) incorporated in Japan; these SMEs are young and unlisted just after incorporation. We find that switching main bank relationships increases the probability of firm bankruptcy. In addition, the result holds only when the relationship between the firm and its main bank is terminated. Specifically, the probability of bankruptcy increases when firms switch their main banks to financial institutions with which they have not previously transacted, and when the ex-post main banks are not affiliated financial institutions of their ex-ante main banks. These results may be because such switching worsens the financial condition of client firms, and thus, it leads to bankruptcy.     

Assessing the economic impact of entrepreneurship on a regional economy using social accounting matrices: the case of Andalusia

This article analyses the impact that entrepreneurial activity has, from the economic point of view, on a regional economy (Andalusia), based on a Social Accounting Matrix linear model. Moreover, to measure entrepreneurship at regional level, it is defined what can be considered an entrepreneurial initiative company from a quantitative point of view. The results obtained, in terms of Production, GDP and job creation, show how entrepreneurship, in the case of Andalusia, contributes to the sustainability of the economy, its growth and, above all, the reduction of unemployment in the short term.     

公司非破产清算：清算人对债权人的民事责任

作为公司非破产清算中重要的责任主体.清算人违反对债权人的清算义务应承担相应的民事责任.本文通过分析指出.清算人对债权人承担民事责任的性质为特别法定责任,清算人承担民事责任应以故意或过失为主观认定标准,清算人的赔偿范围应限定于清算人不履行清算义务或违法清算而致公司财产流失、贬值的部分,对清算人承担赔偿责任应适用举证责任倒置原则,并提出了完善我国清算人对债权人承担民事责任的立法建议.     

Marx on entrepreneurship: A note

This paper argues that in mainstream economics the concept of entrepreneurship is imposed by the theoretical framework adopted in order to justify the source of profits. In contrast, in Marx’s analysis there is a consistent theory of profit which inevitably leads to a specific theory of entrepreneurship. (JEL: B10, B14, B21)     

The place of Austrian economics in contemporary entrepreneurship research

We review the place of Austrian economics in contemporary entrepreneurship and management research, focusing on the contributions of Israel Kirzner. We show that Kirzner’s central concept of entrepreneurial discovery has been vastly influential in theoretical and applied work on entrepreneurship, even though Kirzner’s larger research program has not been well understood. We also describe and assess a number of methodological, ontological, and cognitive critiques of the opportunity-discovery approach and review the most important alternatives, including the judgment-based view associated with Knight (1921) and more recent contributors. We conclude that the entrepreneurship and management literatures provide a useful example of how Austrian economics—Kirznerian economics in particular—can play an important role in shaping mainstream discussions, debates, and research programs in the social sciences.