Planning and the Entrepreneur: A Longitudinal Examination of Nascent Entrepreneurs in Sweden

We studied 623 nascent entrepreneurs during a six‐year period, examining how their planning decisions impact venture‐level performance. Our study is unique in that we tracked nascent ventures, examining their planning behavior, including changes to plans. Relying on the theory of legitimacy, this paper adds to the scholarly debate over the merits of business planning by examining, longitudinally, the impact of planning during a six‐year period, accounting for both pre‐emergent nascent activity and post‐emergent success factors. We found that neither formal planning nor changes in the business plan increased venture‐level performance over the six‐year study period.     

Carl Menger and the network theory of money

Carl Menger has occasionally been cited as a forerunner to the network theory of money. This article analyses Carl Menger's monetary theory and evaluates whether he was aware of the network characteristic of money from a retrospective angle. The result is mixed. Menger is one of the first to discuss the marketability and liquidity of an asset, which in German he denotes Absatzfähigkeit. This concept has a strong connection with the network aspect of a commodity. However, he is not distinct enough in his analysis and there is a lack of depth in his understanding.     

Robust Taylor rules under heterogeneity in currency trade

It is demonstrated in this paper that the exchange rate should be included in the Taylor rule when there is heterogeneity in currency trade to have a determinate and least squares learnable rational expectations equilibrium that also is desirable in an inflation rate targeting regime. Moreover, for certain Taylor rule parameterizations, these properties of the interest rate rule are robust against the degree of technical trading in currency trading.     

Copula-based nonlinear modeling of the law of one price for lumber products

This paper proposes an alternative and potentially novel approach to analyzing the law of one price in a nonlinear fashion. Copula-based models that consider the joint distribution of prices separated by space are developed and applied to weekly prices for lumber products. The copulas capture nonlinearities that arise in the extremes of the joint distributions of price differentials and suggest faster equilibrating adjustments when deviations from parity are extreme.     

Foreign Ownership,Competition, and Survival Dynamics

The impact of foreign direct investment on host countries’ industrial sectors has received considerable attention. It is shown by many researchers that foreign plants are more productive than are domestic ones, but the empirical evidence regarding spillovers is not unambiguous. In this paper, we suggest that the impact of foreign direct investment on local industry hinges on the dynamics of foreign and domestic plants—i.e., on entry and selection (exit) processes. Our analysis of foreign investment and competition dynamics in Turkish manufacturing industry for the period 1983–2001 indicates that foreign plants have a better performance level than do domestic ones when they are first established in the local market, and, subsequently, are more likely to survive but; the difference in survival probabilities disappears when the industry and/or plant characteristics are controlled for. Moreover, foreign presence seems to have no long-term effect on the survival prospects of domestic plants.      

Finnish GNP-series 1954/I–1990/IV: Small shock persistance or trend stationarity? Some evidence with variance ratio estimates

The “shock persistance” of Finnish adjusted quarterly real GNP series in logarithms from 1954/QI to 1990/QIV is analyzed using variance ratio estimators. The results indicate that the random walk component of the series is not big. The small sample properties of variance ratio estimators are studied using empirical distribution derived from simulations. The persistence measures calculated via the ARIMA modelling of the lnGNP_t series are biased upwards. The sampling properties show that the simple random walk model is not an alternative model for the lnGNP. A trend stationary alternative, an AR(2) process, gives almost the same “shock persistence” measures as the assumed unit root processes.     

‘Accounting Talk’ Through Metaphorical Representations: Change Agents and Organisational Change in Home-Based Elderly Care

This paper has analysed a change process within an organisation providing home-based elderly care. Using a theoretical framework from metaphor theory and insights from the literature on ‘accounting talk’, we followed how metaphorical representations of accounting were introduced and developed by the change agent. New core values and practices emerged within the home help unit that were in line with the ideas and inferences made by these accounting metaphors. The metaphorical representations of accounting concepts linked the unfamiliar domain of accounting to a more familiar domain, and provided rationales for organisational change. Our findings highlight the importance of change agents and ‘accounting talk’ for determining the trajectory of organisational change processes. The findings also suggest that metaphors are a potentially powerful tool for both changing organisational members’ general understanding of financial issues, and forging specific links between accounting concepts and work practices.     

Long-run relationships between labor and capital: Indirect evidence on the elasticity of substitution

This paper proposes an indirect method for making empirical inference on the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor. The idea is that estimates of the elasticity may be retrievable from theory derived behavioral equations, by conducting comparative statics with respect to this parameter. This approach is readily applicable to more realistic models than those which are commonly used to derive estimates of the substitution elasticity. It is demonstrated that the conventional approach does not yield sensible estimates on quarterly Finnish manufacturing data. By applying the indirect method, a long-run empirical relationship is found that is consistent with an elasticity of substitution below one.     

Cognitive ability and scale bias in the contingent valuation method

This study investigates whether or not the scale bias found in contingent valuation (CVM) studies on mortality risk reductions is a result of cognitive constraints among respondents. Scale bias refers to insensitivity and non-near-proportionality of the respondents’ willingness to pay (WTP) to the size of the risk reduction. Two hundred Swedish students participated in an experiment in which their cognitive ability was tested before they took part in a CVM-study asking them about their WTP to reduce bus-mortality risk. The results imply that WTP answers from respondents with a higher cognitive ability are less flawed by scale bias.