Reply to the Caplan and Gochenour critique of Georgism

This paper refutes the proposition by Caplan and Gochenour that there is no such thing as natural resources because all goods are produced. Caplan and Gochenour use that proposition to argue against the reform proposal of Henry George and his followers, to replace all taxes with a single tax on land value. The rebuttal to Caplan and Gochenour made by this paper is that the discovery of a resource does not constitute its production. The refutation here argues that entrepreneurship and investment create human capital and capital goods, not natural resources. Discovery is not the same as invention or production.     

Use diffusion: An extension and critique

This study demonstrates that exponential modeling applies to the diffusion of foods. By using per capita data rather than gross consumption data, we show that this exponential process is not an artifact of a simultaneous population increase. However, whereas previous researchers predict that use diffusion continues indefinitely though at decreasing rates from one time period to the next, the present study demonstrates that it can end or even reverse, as well as attenuate. The extension of reinforcement theory in psychology to “social learning” theory is rejected as an explanation of this change, and the alternative “technological substitution” model is discussed.     

Without judgment: An empirically-based entrepreneurial theory of the firm

Austrian ideas about the firm have grown rather naturally out of the central body of Austrian thought with its focus on entrepreneurship, subjectivism and market processes. In this paper we critically evaluate some Austrian ideas on the firm, with particular attention to the concept of entrepreneurial judgment. We then describe recent empirical work in entrepreneurship that has identified key elements of what might reside inside the “black box” of entrepreneurial decision making. We conclude that expertise in this type of decision making embodies procedural knowledge that is adaptive in the absence of substantive knowledge, i.e. without judgment.     

The non-productive entrepreneurial process

A large literature explores the importance of entrepreneurship as the catalyst of economic progress. In contrast, this paper argues that entrepreneurs are the driver of economic stagnation. We analyze the non-productive entrepreneurial process and discuss three channels through which non-productive activities have a multiplier effect culminating in economic decline and stagnation. Drawing on examples of non-productive entrepreneurship from both underdeveloped and developed countries, we provide insight into why economic stagnation persists in the former and why economic decline can occur in the latter.     

Modeling technological innovation risks of an entrepreneurial team using system dynamics: An agent-based perspective

Continuous technological innovation has been playing a vital role in ensuring the survival and development of an enterprise in today's economy. This paper studies the problem of technological innovation risk-based decision-making from an entrepreneurial team point of view. We identify the differences between this team decision-making and a traditional individual decision-making problem, where decisions are mainly affected by the decision-maker's risk and value perceptions, and risk preferences. We create a modeling framework for such a new problem, and use system dynamics theory to model it from the agent-based modeling perspective. The proposed approach is validated by a case study of the technological innovation risk decision-making in a Chinese automobile company.     

优化创业环境之我见

创业环境是指社会环境中与创业行为有关的所有主客观条件的总和。良好的创业环境可以吸引投资者和创业者,并激励他们进行投资创业活动。当前,我国创业环境中存在着有些本应改善的问题而没有从根本上予以改善,须重点在三大方面予以优化：营造浓厚的创业氛围,是优化创业环境的根本;优化支持创业的政策体系,是优化创业环境的核心;完善创业服务体系,是优化创业环境的基础。     

Commercial complexity and entrepreneurial finance

This paper shows that the probability of small business firms obtaining outside financing to support their research and development projects is greater given more complex commercial opportunities – defined as a greater number of different potential applications for a project’s anticipated results – for their innovations. The effects on the probability of outside finance found for other factors are consistent with the earlier findings in the literature about innovative entrepreneurial firms.     

Entrepreneurial exit and entrepreneurial engagement

This paper investigates whether and how a recent entrepreneurial exit relates to subsequent engagement. We discriminate between six levels of engagement including none, potential, intentional, nascent, young and established entrepreneurship. We use individual-level data for 24 countries that participated in the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor during 2004, 2005 and 2006 (some 350,000 observations). Our findings indeed show that a recent exit decreases the probability of undertaking no entrepreneurial activity, whereas it substantially increases the probabilities of being involved in all other engagement levels. Investigating the conditions under which an exit increases engagement in entrepreneurial activities, we find that the probability of entrepreneurial engagement after exit is higher for males, for persons who know an entrepreneur and for persons with a low fear of failure. Educational attainment does not seem to be relevant. Moreover, there exists large cross-country variation in the probability of entrepreneurial engagement after exit.     

创业市场信心与创业行为关系的动态解析 ——基于GEM与WBD的混合横截面数据的经验证据

本文以行为理论为基础,从动态视角出发,探讨完整经济周期下,创业者创业市场信心与创业行为间关系的变化趋势。同时,分析创业者所处国家的经济发展水平与发展导向及自身社会经济地位在创业市场信心对创业行为正向作用变化趋势中的调节效应。本文根据2006—2015年全球创业观察（GEM）与世界银行数据库（WBD）,构建混合截面数据来探索创业者创业市场信心的反应及其差异。研究发现：(1)在经济衰退期内,创业市场信心对创业行为的正向作用会显著减弱。在随后的经济扩张初期,创业市场信心对创业行为的正向作用会明显增强;(2)处于发展中国家及高经济外向度国家的创业者,创业市场信心对创业行为的正向作用的减弱与增强均会更加剧烈。另外,补充研究发现：(3)仅在经济扩张初期,创业者社会经济地位能积极调节时间对创业市场信心与创业行为间关系的调节效果。本文揭示了创业市场信心与创业行为间关系的变化趋势及该变化产生的边界条件,在一定程度上丰富了创业心理驱动要素对创业行为影响的动态研究,并促进实践界关注经济衰退对创业市场信心冲击而带来的创业活动萎靡的潜在风险。     

A critique of capitalist man

Humanistic economics is founded on the reality of human needs. One of those needs is for truth. According to the correspondence theory, that truth is a relation between statement and objective reality. This reality serves as a constraint on the (ego) self. Therefore, it can also be shown that self-interest is an independent principle from the commitment to truth, and that these two principles can clash. These two principles of the self, or the “higher” and “lower” self, constitute what we call the dual self.     

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.     

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.     

Dynamic capabilities and entrepreneurial management in large organizations: Toward a theory of the (entrepreneurial) firm

Mainstream economic theory has generally excluded consideration of the role of managers, which has, in turn, impaired its ability to explain resource allocation by, and heterogeneity among, firms. In the real world, managers are called on to fill entrepreneurial and leadership roles: sensing opportunities, developing and implementing viable business models, building capabilities, and guiding the organization through transformations. These entrepreneurial management tasks are part of the organization׳s capabilities, which also encompass embedded organizational processes that can be slow to change. An understanding of entrepreneurial management and organizational capabilities will contribute to more realistic economic models and a better understanding by policy makers of industrial dynamics and the requirements of innovation.     

An Austrian (Mis)Reads Adam Smith: A critique of Rothbard as intellectual historian

Murray Rothbard's posthumous Economic Thought Before Adam Smith is notable for its vilification of 'the quiet Scottish professor.' While there is little disagreement that Smith was, at best, an ambivalent champion of free markets, Rothbard's indictment of him as a proto-Marxist is less than persuasive. We argue that Rothbard's book suffers from logical flaws, selective and incomplete textual evidence, a misunderstanding of Das Adam Smith Problem and the relevant literature, and an unawareness of modern incentive-based theories of the firm and state anticipated in Book V of The Wealth of Nations.     

Environmental terrorism: a critique

As terrorism once again makes news headlines and attracts renewed attention from scholars, the usage of terms related to terrorism may well outpace the development of sound conceptualization of these themes. A case in point is environmental terrorism about which a small body of literature has already been written. The objective of this paper is to examine the theme of environmental terrorism by applying critiques of the more developed but similarly problematic area of environmental security. Three critiques of environmental security literature argue that there is insufficient clarity on how natural resources are linked to conflict, that the term ‘environment’ is not sufficiently clear as a guide to or boundary of a research area, and that the term ‘security’ prioritizes a realist, state-centric perspective that provides a limited perspective on relationships between natural resources and conflict. In this paper, the theme of environmental terrorism is subjected to parallel critiques as a way to examine the usefulness of this concept. Environmental terrorism, as a label, may be only partially helpful as a guide to future research that would also be aided by context-specific examinations of vulnerable natural resource and energy systems.     

浅析大学生创业环境

如今,随着科学技术的不断发展、经济结构的优化,社会正处于变革期,恰好给大学生创业带来了契机。大学毕业生自主创业,无疑是具有典型性的大学生择业新动向。目前,政府的政策和经济形势为大学生创业提供了良好的环境。创业不仅是大学生解决自身就业的途径,而且还可以创造就业机会,但大学生仍须将自己的综合素质提高到一定程度,并有了充足准备后方可付诸行动。     

Rothbardian demand: A critique

This paper refutes Rothbard??s claim that the law of diminishing marginal utility implies a non-increasing demand curve. It is argued that the law under Rothbard??s interpretation is, in fact, irrelevant for demand theory. An example of increasing demand is provided.