The entrepreneurial ladder and its determinants

We test a new model where the entrepreneurial decision is described as a process of successive engagement levels, i.e. as an entrepreneurial ladder. Five levels are distinguished using nearly 12 000 observations from the 2004 ‘Flash Eurobarometer survey on Entrepreneurship’ covering the 25 European Union member states and the United States. The most surprising of the many results is that perception of lack of financial support is no obstacle for moving to a higher entrepreneurial engagement level whereas perceived administrative complexity is a significant obstacle. We also show that the effect of age on the probability of moving forward in the entrepreneurial process becomes negative after a certain age implying that if entrepreneurial engagements are not taken early enough in life they may well never be taken.     

创业压力与退出意愿——创业激情的中介作用与社会支持的调节效应

本文以资源保存理论为基础,将中国科技创业园区中的创业者作为研究对象,探讨遭遇挫折的创业者所面临的创业压力对创业退出意愿的影响机制,重点分析创业激情的中介作用与社会支持的调节效应,形成有调节的中介作用模型。研究发现:创业压力是促使创业者产生创业退出意愿的重要前因变量;创业激情负向中介创业压力对创业退出意愿的正向作用,即创业压力抑制了创业激情,而受到抑制的创业激情则强化了创业退出意愿;社会支持弱化了创业压力对创业退出意愿的正向影响,同时也缓解了创业压力对创业激情的负向影响,进而对创业激情的中介效应产生调节作用,并且在不同强度的社会支持下,创业激情的条件中介效应之间存在显著差异。研究结论弥补了创业退出研究的理论文献,对促进创业者在“双创”环境下的成功创业具有重要启示意义。     

产业发展效率视角的企业家行为配置研究新进展

企业家生产性行为的合理配置直接决定着经济结构变迁和产业发展效率。具体来说：企业家对产业目标市场的进入与退出能力和水平决定了产业发展的方向以及产业结构之间的合理性;企业家的生产性产业投资行为与水平决定了产业发展的速度;企业家的技术选择和技术吸收能力决定了产业发展的质量和产业结构的高级化;企业家对生产组织与生产方式选择的生产性行为也与产业发展效率直接关联。本文对国外这几个方面研究的最新进展进行了文献回顾与述评。     

Born to flip. Exit decisions of entrepreneurial firms in high-tech and low-tech industries

This paper examines the way that the exit behavior of entrepreneurial firms is shaped by their innovative capabilities, and the technology environment in which they operate. We distinguish between exit by closing down activity and exit by merger or acquisition (M&A). Using a large sample of Dutch manufacturing firms, we explore the relationship between firm exit, age and innovative capabilities, in high and low innovation intensive industries. We find that for entrepreneurial firms, innovation may go some way towards compensating for the liability of newness, but also makes them more attractive M&A targets. More specifically, entrepreneurial firms in high-tech industries do not seem to improve their chances of survival by innovating; when technological change is rapid, innovation, especially in products, is necessary to participate in the innovation race in an industry, but is not sufficient to guarantee survival. In contrast, in low-tech industries, process innovation is a critical condition for the survival of entrepreneurial firms. In this context, entrepreneurial firms that are able to bring new product ideas, introducing ‘exceptional’ variations into a stable environment, are most likely to exit by M&A, thereby transferring their knowledge and capabilities to the incumbent firms.     

Disability Support Pension Recipients: Who Gets Off (and Stays Off) Payments?

We use Centrelink payment records on Disability Support Pension (DSP) recipients over the period 1995 to 2002 to investigate individual transitions off payments. Our findings are consistent with the existence of a close correspondence between disability benefit receipt and labour market outcomes: entry to DSP via unemployment benefits is associated with substantially reduced prospects of exiting DSP, while employment during the DSP spell is associated with not only an increased probability of exiting DSP, but also more success in staying off payments once an exit has been made. A further finding of our analysis is that persons who exit DSP due to take‐up of employment have a relatively high rate of return to payments compared with persons who exit for other reasons, and indeed exhibit a high propensity to cycle off and on payments.     

The strength and persistence of entrepreneurial cultures

The twentieth century United States provides a natural experiment to measure the strength and persistence of entrepreneurial cultures. Assuming immigrants bear the cultures of their birth place, comparison of revealed entrepreneurial propensities of US immigrant groups in 1910 and 2000 reflected these backgrounds. Two measures of entrepreneurial culture are employed; the first is simply the chance that a member of the migrant group will be an employer and the second is the origin country effect on this probability, conditional upon personal characteristics. The preferred second measure shows persistence of some cultures and change of others over the twentieth century. Among the more stable cultures North-western Europe, where modern economic growth is widely held to have originated, did not host unusually strong entrepreneurial propensities. Instead such cultures were carried by persons originating from Greece, Turkey and Italy, together with Jews.     

Revolving doors: entrepreneurial survival and exit

The high turbulence of new entrepreneurial ventures that are rapidly selected out at the fringe of the firm population has been emphasized using the ??revolving doors?? metaphor. However, well-planned exit strategies can be the root of entrepreneurial success and a mechanism to transfer novelty to established firms. The aim of this Special Issue is to highlight the multiple aspects of exit as part of the entrepreneurial process.     

From distress to exit: determinants of the time to exit

This paper analyses the duration of the time to exit of distressed firms, differentiating between court driven exits (mainly bankruptcies) and voluntary liquidations. It examines how long firms survive after initial signs of economic distress. The study is conducted on an extensive dataset of 5,233 Belgian distress-related exits of mature firms, the majority being privately held. The results highlight that slack resources have an opposite effect on the timing of court driven exits and voluntary liquidations. On the one hand, high levels of available and potential slack increase the time to court driven exit, as they allow distressed firms to postpone an impending court driven exit. On the other hand, high available slack resources shorten the time to voluntary liquidation, since they make voluntary liquidation easier. Further, a high level of stakeholder dependence increases the time to exit after distress, whether the firm exits through voluntary liquidation or through a court decided exit. This is explained by the fact that stakeholder dependence increases the complexity of the exit decision and the exit procedure.     

Overseas Work Experience, Savings and Entrepreneurship Amongst Return Migrants to LDCs

This paper contributes to a small but rapidly growing literature concerned with the potentially substantial implications of international migration for economic development in LDCs. We study the linkages between overseas employment, savings and entrepreneurial activity on return. In an econometric model of the probability of entrepreneurial activity, we find evidence supporting the hypotheses that both overseas savings, and the duration of stay overseas increase the probability of becoming an entrepreneur amongst literate returnees to Egypt. Amongst illiterate returnees, overseas savings alone increase the probability of becoming an entrepreneur. The results for literates suggest that skill acquisition overseas may matter more substantially than overcoming a savings constraint in explaining how overseas opportunities influence entrepreneurship on return. For illiterates, who usually accept menial positions overseas that offer little opportunity for learning, the opposite obtains.     

Renascent entrepreneurship

Why should individuals who have exited their firm consider re-entering into entrepreneurship, i.e. become renascent entrepreneurs? According to the logic of economic models of firm dynamics there is no reason to re-enter into entrepreneurship following firm failure. In contrast, research on nascent entrepreneurship has shown the positive effect of entrepreneurial experience on planning a new firm start. Based on empirical evidence from a database consisting of ex-entrepreneurs, this study shows that renascent entrepreneurship is a pervasive phenomenon. Next to passive learning, active learning plays an important role in the explanation of entrepreneurial preferences subsequent to firm exit. This study provides new insights into the role of prior knowledge and firm exit in the entrepreneurial process.     

The Probability of Leaving Unemployment: The Influence of Duration,Destination and Demographics*

This paper examines the influences of a number of demographic characteristics and the duration of unemployment on the probability of leaving unemployment. This probability is found to decrease as the duration of unemployment increases, with married females having the highest probability of exit. Various measures of average completed duration suggest that the longest spells of unemployment are incurred by older males. These appear to be longest for males withdrawing from the labour market. The relationship between the duration of unemployment and the probability of exit is important for labour market policy. Some relevant considerations are also explored in the paper.     

心理资本对创业坚持的影响——内在动机与创业榜样的调节作用

创业坚持是创业成功的重要前提。作为复杂的决策行为,创业坚持受到多方面因素的共同作用。基于社会认知理论,探讨乐观、韧性、自我效能感和希望等心理资本对创业坚持的影响,以及内在动机和创业榜样发挥的情境效应。通过对我国202名创业者进行问卷调查发现：创业者的乐观、韧性、自我效能感和希望均能够显著促进其坚持创业;内在动机正向调节乐观、韧性、自我效能感各自与创业坚持的关系;创业榜样对乐观、韧性、自我效能感各自与创业坚持的关系发挥正向调节作用。将个体因素(心理资本和内在动机)与环境因素(创业榜样)纳入同一理论框架,讨论其对创业坚持的影响,以期为创业坚持研究提供新颖和全面的视角。     

The role of corruption and risk aversion in entrepreneurial intentions

The literature on entrepreneurship has suggested that an individual’s entrepreneurial intention depends on three types of factor: personal characteristics, the individual’s expertise and professional background, and external factors. Our study investigates how corruption, an external factor, and risk aversion, a personal characteristic, may simultaneously affect individuals’ entrepreneurial intentions. With data on 76 203 individuals in 53 countries, our estimation results indicate that risk aversion decreases the individual’s probability of having an entrepreneurial intention by 6.67 percentage points. In addition, an increase in 1 SD in the perceived level of corruption in a country decreases the individual’s probability of having an entrepreneurial intention by 0.96 percentage points.     

Firm exit and technical inefficiency

The purpose of the paper is to examine formally the fundamental implication that technical inefficiency (TI) is related to firm exit. Traditional stochastic frontier models allow for the measurement of TI but do not allow for a direct effect of TI on exit. We propose a model which allows for such effects and consists of a stochastic frontier model, and an additional equation that describes the probability of exit as a function of covariates and TI. Since TI is unobserved, econometric complications arise, and obtaining consistent estimates is non-trivial due to the presence of integrals in the likelihood function. We propose and implement maximum likelihood estimation one step, employing data for 3,404 manufacturing firms in Greece. We find significant positive effects from TI on the probability of exit. We also propose and provide measures of TI that respect the fact that unobserved TI affects the probability of exit and compare them to TI measures from the traditional stochastic frontier model.

高科技创业团队的合作驱动因素研究

基于囚徒困境理论,提出影响创业团队成员合作决策的概念模型。以L公司为案例,考察其初创、转型发展、出现团队冲突、最后解体的发展过程,分析创业团队的合作与背叛行为,研究高科技创业企业的创业团队合作驱动因素。研究发现:合适的团队组成是创业团队顺利合作的关键前提;背叛成本、预期回报、有效沟通以及创业伙伴间的价值认同和信任是影响创业团队成员合作的主要因素;设计合理的核心团队成员进入和退出机制有助于创业团队的成长和转型。在此基础上,构建了高科技创业团队合作驱动因素模型。     

The shadow of death model revisited with an application to French firms

This article provides an empirical model of the shadow of death in which the exit probability of a firm depends on the firm’s productive performance and the firm’s level of sunk costs, which are viewed as barriers to exit. The shadow of death effect is treated by assuming a relationship between the propensity to exit and both the contemporaneous and lagged values of efficiency and sunk costs. To estimate the unobserved productive efficiency, we use the Ackerberg et al. (2006) estimator extended by the addition of a correction for selection bias. We use an unbalanced sample of approximately 100 000 French firms over the period 1997 to 2002. Our results indicate that the probability of exit is negatively affected by unobserved individual efficiency and the level of sunk costs. The shadow of death effect applies mainly in manufacturing, where both productive efficiency and sunk costs decrease during several years before exit. In service sectors, the exit process seems to occur more suddenly.     

Can entrepreneurship bring happiness? Evidence from China

This paper investigates the relationship between entrepreneurial activities and the happiness of entrepreneurs. We estimate the effects of entrepreneurial decision-making, business experience and other factors on happiness by using China Household Finance Survey data. Our results derived from maximum likelihood estimation methods indicate that entrepreneurial decision-making and entrepreneurial experience affect household happiness significantly. The family well-being is significantly increased if the family is entrepreneurial, and it will be higher if actively entrepreneurial. Both entrepreneurial experience and entrepreneurial investment of time have significantly positive effect on the probability of family well-being. In addition, we find that the mechanism by which entrepreneurship brings happiness to households is through raising household income and wealth, that is, income effects and wealth effects.     

政策支持、创业激情与技术创业成功：政策感知的调节作用

为了厘清政策支持对技术创业成功的作用机制,将创业激情作为中介变量、政策感知作为调节变量,构建政策支持影响技术创业成功的理论模型,并结合云南地区291家技术创业企业数据开展实证研究。结果表明：政策支持促进技术创业成功;政策支持通过激发技术创业者创业激情进而促进技术创业成功;政策感知强化政策支持对技术创业成功的正向影响,同时增强政策支持对创业激情的正向影响,对创业激情的中介过程具有调节作用,即在不同水平政策感知下,创业激情的中介效用存在明显差异。     

Exit polls,turnout, and bandwagon voting: Evidence from a natural experiment

We exploit a voting reform in France to estimate the causal effect of exit poll information on turnout and bandwagon voting. Before the change in legislation, individuals in some French overseas territories voted after the election result had already been made public via exit poll information from mainland France. We estimate that knowing the exit poll information decreases voter turnout by about 11 percentage points. Our study is the first clean empirical design outside of the laboratory to demonstrate the effect of such knowledge on voter turnout. Furthermore, we find that exit poll information significantly increases bandwagon voting; that is, voters who choose to turn out are more likely to vote for the expected winner.     

Environmental Regulations and Plant Exit

A qualitative response model is applied to study the relationship between environmental regulations and plant exit. The data set is Norwegian panel data for establishments in three manufacturing sectors that have high shares of units which have been under strict environmental regulations. In two of the sectors, the estimated exit probability of regulated establishments is, ceteris paribus, only one third of the exit probability of non-regulated establishments. We also find that the probability to change regulation status from being non-regulated to become regulated depends significantly on economic factors. In particular, establishments with weak profitability had the highest probability to come under environmental regulation.