The impact of education,experience and inner circle advisors on SME performance: insights from a study of public development centers

In this study, we investigate the effects of entrepreneurial human capital on SME performance using data on 2,713 SMEs within the European Union. Performance was measured in two ways: profitability as ROA and productivity as revenue per employee. Results indicate that both profitability and productivity are positively related to industry-specific knowledge possessed by the CEO-owner prior to starting up the firm and the general business knowledge acquired once the firm is up and running. Experience as a result of having previously worked in a firm in the same industry before starting a business was related to productivity, but there is no relation with profitability. There is a link between performance and inclusion of other CEO-owners in the founder’s inner circle of advisors. This relationship is positive when the advisor’s venture has experienced failure and negative when the advisor’s venture has been successful. We discuss the significance of these findings for research and practice.     

An examination of the equity market price linkage between Australia and the European Union using leveraged bootstrap method

The paper examines the equity market price interaction between Australia and the European Union – represented by the UK, Germany and France – based on the Toda–Yamamoto causality test, which is bootstrapped with leveraged adjustments. A new information criterion is used to choose the optimal lag order. Weekly MSCI data covering the period 1988 to 2001 is used, divided into two subperiods to allow for a structural break arising from the ERM crisis of 1992. Results show that, during the period before the ERM crisis, no significant causal links exist between Australia and any of three EU countries. During the period after the ERM crisis, Australia also had no causal links with Germany and France but it had with the UK, with causality running from the UK to Australia but not vice-versa. Thus, Australian investors may find the German and French, but not the UK, equity markets, attractive venues for their international diversification. German and French, but not British, investors may also obtain the same benefit from the Australian equity market.     

A continuous time approach to the pricing of bonds

This paper develops an arbitrage model of the term structure of interest rates based on the assumptions that the whole term structure at any point in time may be expressed as a function of the yields on the longest and shortest maturity default free instruments and that these two yields follow a Gauss-Wiener process. Arbitrage arguments are used to derive a partial differential equation which must be satisfied by the values of all default free bonds. The joint stochastic process for the two yields is estimated using Canadian data and the model is used to price a sample of Government of Canada bonds.     

The struggle for space: Past and future of the space race

This article is geared toward shedding some more light on what may be the next space race and its contours.Space flight is undoubtedly a human achievement of the second half of the 20th century, and probably the most audacious one of the past century. The space race started suddenly in the 1950s and has grown explosively during the following two decades, but decreased steadily after the 1970s. After the 1990s, however, we have seen a shy rebirth of space-related activities, when many other actors (states) entered the stage, adding up to the agonizing role of the two-actor piece that we have witnessed during the so-called Cold War.The opening years of the 21st century provided a more complex narrative for space exploration. At the start of the new millennium a new technosphere [1] emerged, dominated by what is used to be called as the Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), with the Internet playing the leading role among the bandwagon of technological novelties that appeared during the twilight of space activities. In despite of the fact that artificial satellites represent the very backbone of the global communications system, space activities seem to play a secondary role amidst the apparently accelerated rate of change concerning the technological systems of the present technosphere. But, as it is demonstrated in this paper, things are changing, and very probably a renewed space race will unfold in the coming decades.A question may be placed: what happened? Why the Earth stood still with regard to the race toward the cosmos? Answer: futurists, even prestigious ones like Herman Kahn and Arthur Clarke, did not consider the existence of socioeconomic long waves (Kondratieff waves, or K-waves for short) with their two decades long economic downturn, which has contributed to the deceleration of space-related activities.Analyzing the worldwide evolving scenario of space-related activities during the last eighty years under the framework of the succeeding K-waves and applying some technological forecasting tools, namely the logistic analysis, technological surveillance and intensive data mining, scrutinizing more than 7500 events occurred in the period 1930–2010 related with space activities, it is demonstrated that the space race like the one that we have witnessed until now is a natural growth process that has saturated at the dawn of this century. The same analysis demonstrates that a new growth process in this field might be nowadays under way with contours very different from that imagined by futurists and science fiction writers sixty years ago. Also the main trends in the usage of launching vehicles and satellites are framed and discussed in this paper.     

Breaking the norm: An empirical investigation into the unraveling of good behavior

We present results from an artefactual field experiment conducted in rural Peru that considers whether observing non-reciprocal behavior influences an individual's decision to reciprocate. Specifically, we consider the behavior of second movers in a trust game, assessing whether their decision to reciprocate is influenced by the observed reciprocity of others. In documenting the impact of an external shock to observed reciprocity, this paper shows that small increases in non-reciprocal behavior result in an unraveling of the norm of reciprocity. Survey data is used to explore mechanisms by which this occurred. Results are not consistent with learning effects, suggesting that preferences may be changed by observing others deviating from a norm of reciprocity. These results suggest that investing in encouraging trustworthy behavior can have large benefits in situations where individuals are observing each other's behavior, such as may be the case in a new market institution.     

Agricultural commodities pricing model applied to the Brazilian sugar market

This article suggests a pricing model for commodities used to produce biofuel. The model is based on the concept that the deterministic component of the Wiener process is not constant and depends on time and exogenous variables. The model, which incorporates theory of storage, the convenience yield and the seasonality of harvests, was applied in the Brazilian sugar market. After predictions were made with the Kalman filter, the model produced results that were statistically more accurate than those returned by the two‐factor model available in the literature.