Gender Characterizations in Entrepreneurship: A Multi‐Level Investigation of Sex‐Role Stereotypes about High‐Growth,Commercial, and Social Entrepreneurs

The purpose of this study is to cast new light on possible gender biases in implicit theories people hold about various forms of entrepreneurial activity. Using social role theory, we delve into sex‐role stereotypes associated with high‐ and low‐growth entrepreneurship and commercial and social entrepreneurship. Predictions were tested with an experimental design using both a between‐subject design to capture group‐level stereotypes and a within‐subject design to capture individual‐level stereotypes. Findings reveal that commercial and high‐growth entrepreneurs are perceived as more similar to men than to women and higher on agency than communality. Conversely, low‐growth entrepreneurs are perceived as more similar to women than men, and higher on communality than agency. Social entrepreneurs are uniquely perceived as similar to both men and women, though they are also considered higher on agency than communality. Interestingly, female, but not male respondents, perceive some overlap between the feminine gender role and high‐growth and commercial entrepreneurship. Notably, those higher on modern sexism perceive less overlap between entrepreneurship and femininity. Taken together, our results suggest that commercial high‐growth entrepreneurship is most strongly male‐typed, which is likely to be problematic for women (and non‐traditional men) wanting to start growth‐oriented ventures. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Convergence in Income Inequality: Further Evidence from the Club Clustering Methodology across States in the U.S.

This paper contributes to the sparse literature on inequality convergence by empirically testing convergence across states in the U.S. This sample period encompasses a series of different periods that the existing literature discusses -- the Great Depression (1929–1944), the Great Compression (1945–1979), the Great Divergence (1980-present), the Great Moderation (1982–2007), and the Great Recession (2007–2009). This paper implements the relatively new method of panel convergence testing, recommended by Phillips and Sul (2007). This method examines the club convergence hypothesis, which argues that certain countries, states, sectors, or regions belong to a club that moves from disequilibrium positions to their club-specific steady-state positions. We find strong support for convergence through the late 1970s and early 1980s, and then evidence of divergence. The divergence, however, moves the dispersion of inequality measures across states only a fraction of the way back to their levels in the early part of the twentieth century.     

South Africa’s monetary policy independence: evidence from a Global New-Keynesian DSGE model

We study the response of South African monetary policy decisions to foreign monetary policy shocks. We estimate the extent of foreign monetary policy pass through by augmenting standard Taylor rules and comparing the results within the context of a Global New-Keynesian Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model. The general equilibrium model captures important spill-over effects that would otherwise have been ignored in a single equation set-up. The results show that the relationship between foreign monetary policy shocks and South African interest rates is complicated – South Africa does not import foreign monetary policy directly, but is still affected. Except for the US, an increase in foreign interest rates leads to a decrease in South African interest rates – highlighting the complex channels that the monetary policy authority has to monitor outside of its economy.     

External validation of the use of vignettes in cross-country health studies

Cross-country comparisons of subjective assessments are rendered difficult if not impossible because of sub-population specific response style. To correct for this, the use of vignettes has become increasingly popular, notably within cross-country health studies. However, the validity of vignettes as a means to re-scale across sample sub-populations critically rests on the assumption of “response consistency” (RC): that vignettes and self-assessments are evaluated on the same scale. In this paper, we seek to test this assumption by applying objective measures of health along with subjective measures and vignettes. Our results indicate that the assumption of RC is not innocuous and that our extended model relaxing this assumption improves the fit and significantly changes the cross-country rankings of health vis-á-vis the standard Chopit model.     

THE VALUE OF A REGULATORY SEAL OF APPROVAL

I investigate whether obtaining a regulatory seal of approval adds to firm value. For a sample of thirty-four firms that acquired the insured deposits of failed banks, I find a significantly greater price response for firms that could benefit from obtaining a regulatory seal of approval than for firms that had recently obtained a similar form of approval. Further, abnormal returns to winning bidders are significantly larger when a regulatory seal of approval is likely to be more valuable, i.e., when the industry faces severe economic problems. In addition, bidder gains are significant only in markets where regulatory certification of a firm's health is important—markets that have recently experienced several bank failures. Finally, wealth transfers from the FDIC insurance fund may contribute to bidder gains. The evidence suggests that obtaining a regulatory seal of approval can positively affect firm value.     

The Effect of Bid Rigging on Prices: A Study of the Highway Construction Industry

This paper examines the effect of multimarket contact in afirst price sealed bid government procurement auction market. It investigates whether bidprices in the highway construction industry are related to conditions that favor the formation of a cartel.Repeated contacts among firms are found to have a significantly positive effect on the winning low bidwhich leads to higher profit. Further, rivalry among few firms tends to exacerbate the multimarket effect.The results in this study additionally support the recent theoretical predictions that collusion isbetter sustainable during economic downturns.     

On the interpretation of price-quality relations

While low price-quality correlations are commonly cited as evidence of markets which are in some way inefficient, we argue in this paper that price-quality correlations do not necessarily reflect the degree of efficiency of a market. We first define a measure of market efficiency as the aggregate amount which consumers lose due to not choosing the maximum utility brand. Given this measure, and a model of consumer search behavior, we demonstrate analytically that losses in a particular market depend on the distribution of prices and qualities, on the number of alternative brands, and on the level of search costs, as well as on the price-quality correlation. We construct several numerical examples which demonstrate that losses need not be closely related to price-quality correlations.     

A note on component-wise kronecker designs

Summary The paper investigates the particular case of symmetrical block designs with block size two. It is shown that the component-wise Kronecker product of two such designs (c.f. Mukerjee 1981) is connected if and only if the numbers of treatments are relatively prime.