Trends in European Research on Entrepreneurship at the Turn of the Century

This article serves as an introduction to the special issue on Entrepreneurship Research in Europe, a selection of papers from the XIVth RENT conference held in Prague, the Czech Republic, November 23–24, 2000. It provides an overview of the articles and also discusses some of the themes that bind them together: Networking and the diffusion of innovations and family business. In addition, the paper includes a short section highlighting advances in the Italian entrepreneurship climate as evidenced by data provided by several of the papers in this issue carried out by Italian researchers on Italian SMEs.     

Ethical Dilemmas in Performance Measurement

In this article we discuss the ethical dilemmas facing performance evaluators and the "evaluatees" whose performances are measured in a business context. The concepts of role morality and common morality are used to develop a framework of behaviors that are normally seen as the moral responsibilities of these actors. This framework is used to analyze, based on four empirical situations, why the implementation of a performance measurement system has not been as effective as expected. It was concluded that, in these four cases, unethical behavior (i.e. deviations from the ethical behaviors identified in the framework) provided, at least to some extent, an explanation for the lower than expected effectiveness of the performance measurement procedures. At the end of the paper we present an agenda for further research through which the framework could be further developed and systematically applied to a broader set of cases.     

Passive Firm Learning and Employment Projection Error

This paper analyzes establishment error in estimating employment targets in business startups and expansions. Passive firm learning models provide a testable hypothesis that, other things being equal, old establishments more accurately predict future employment targets than young businesses. Empirical evidence from 442 Ohio establishments implies that an increase of ten years in establishment age is associated with a decrease in employment projection error rate of between 11 and 13 percentage points.     

Light pollution,sleep deprivation,and infant health at birth

We conduct the first study to examine the fetal health impact of light pollution based on a direct measure of skyglow, an important aspect of light pollution. Using an empirical regularity discovered in physics (called Walker's law) as an instrumental variable, we address the potential endogeneity problem associated with the skyglow variable. We find evidence of reduced birth weight, shortened gestational length, and increases in preterm births. Specifically, increased nighttime brightness, characterized by being able to see only one‐fourth to one‐third of the stars that are visible in the natural unpolluted night sky, is associated with an increase of 1.48 percentage points in the likelihood of a preterm birth. Our study adds to the literature on the impact of early‐life exposure to pollution, which so far has focused primarily on air pollution. Our study has important policy implications regarding the necessity of minimizing skyglow that is, for example, contributed by streetlights.     

Determining farm effects attributable to the introduction and use of a dairy management information system in The Netherlands

Yearly production and reproduction data on dairy farms in The Netherlands were obtained to determine whether management information systems significantly improved herd performance variables (management information systems (MIS) effects). The analysis included 357 adopters of a management information system and 357 herds were used as controls. The data comprised years 1987 through 1996, and included for the adopters both the ‘before’ and ‘after’ period. Panel data analysis enabled to estimate MIS effects both within and between farms, allowing for a separation of farm‐specific effects and common (trend) effects. Adoption and use of a management information system resulted in a significant annual increase in rolling herd average milk (carrier) and protein production of 62 and 2.36 kg per cow, respectively. Calving interval was shortened by 5 days. The pay‐back period was approximately 5 years of the system (including the hardware), and therefore, MIS appears to be economically profitable.     

Research returns redux: a meta-analysis of the returns to agricultural R&D

A total of 289 studies of returns to agricultural R&D were compiled and these provide 1821 estimates of rates of return. After removing statistical outliers and incomplete observations, across the remaining 1128 observations the estimated annual rates of return averaged 65 per cent overall — 80 per cent for research only, 80 per cent for extension only, and 47 per cent for research and extension combined. These averages reveal little meaningful information from a large body of literature, which provides rate-of-return estimates that are often not directly comparable. This study was aimed at trying to account for the differences. Several features of the methods used by research evaluators matter, in particular assumptions about lag lengths and the nature of the research-induced supply shift.     

The Simple Analytics of Evaluating NFL Trades

Atlantic Economic Journal -     

Unemployment and Catching Up: Europe Vis-à-vis the USA

This paper develops a two-region two-sector endogenous growth model with a dual labour market based on efficiency wages. Growth is driven by research done in the (high-tech) tradeables sector. The follower region tends to catch up in terms of labour productivity with the leader region. Differences in unemployment compensation systems can lead to relative convergence, i.e., a steady state with the backward region lagging behind the leader region. The reason for this is that high social welfare compensations generate high unemployment and reduce the amount of labour employed for R&D purposes.