Defining the ‘Social’ in ‘Social Entrepreneurship’: Altruism and Entrepreneurship

What is social entrepreneurship? In, particular, what’s so social about it? Understanding what social entrepreneurship is enables researchers to study the phenomenon and policy-makers to design measures to encourage it. However, such an understanding is lacking partly because there is no universally accepted definition of entrepreneurship as yet. In this paper, we suggest a definition of social entrepreneurship that intuitively accords with what is generally accepted as entrepreneurship and that captures the way in which entrepreneurship may be altruistic. Based on this we provide a taxonomy of social entrepreneurship and identify a number of real cases from Asia illustrating the different forms it could take.     

What Global Emission Regulations Should Corporations Support?

In their role as political actors and lobbyists, corporations have responsibilities to help determine the existence and content of global regulations of pollutants. The ethical nature of those responsibilities is highly sensitive to the assumed normative framework. This paper compares several frameworks by modeling them as differently weighted versions of utilitarianism. Under a strict neoclassical approach, corporations have a narrow obligation to maximize profits, which generally entails opposing emission regulations. In contrast, a stakeholder approach as well as Marxian and common ethics approaches suggest that firms have an obligation to actively support sustainable emission regulations with the following properties

Longitudinal Analysis of Relationships between Planning and Performance in Small Firms

This paper investigates causal relationships between planning and performance utilizing a longitudinal database with responses from the same 2,956 businesses over a four-year period. Results confirm the association between planning activity and performance that is evident in most extant literature. They also, however, cast doubt on the traditional perception of the causal sequence of that association. Although subject to a number of limitations, the results indicate that planning is more likely to be introduced into a small firm after a period of growth rather than before a period of growth. These results make an important contribution to understanding the planning performance relationship for two main reasons: they overcome the static data and relatively smaller sample size restrictions of many past studies; and, they provide evidence concerning the sequence of the relationship between planning and performance.     

Modelling Entrepreneurship: Unifying The Equilibrium and Entry/Exit Approach

Two approaches can be distinguished with respect to modelling entrepreneurship: (i) the approach focusing on the net development of the number of entrepreneurs in an equilibrium framework and (ii) the approach focusing on the entries and exits of entrepreneurs. In this paper we unify these approaches to arrive at a model explaining the equilibrium and actual number of entrepreneurs and the entry and exit rate of entrepreneurs simultaneously and consistently. We apply our unified approach to the Netherlands using self-employment data for the 1960–1999 period. We find error-correction of about 20% per year and a very different situation in terms of disequilibrium before and after the early 1980s. Periods of high unemployment appear to be characterized by both high entry and high exit rates.     

“Watch that Space! The County Hierarchy in Firm Births and Deaths in the UK, 1980–1999”

The paper investigates the relationships between registrations, de-registrations and population density at county level in the UK using VAT data for 20 years over the period 1980–1999. The rationale for this is based on the need to understand how the extent to which, in different parts of the UK, differences in the relationship between birth rates and death rates combine to produce an interpretable pattern in net birth rates. The analysis of the net birth rate shows that a strategy aimed at the net birth rate might, in principle, just as well aim at reducing business failure, rather than raising the birth rate. Indeed this might be more efficient, since it implies that less start-ups are “wasted^” as it would avoid the necessity, if targets are to be reached, of encouraging those individuals who are patently unsuited to running their own business into business ownership.     

Monte Carlo Simulation Techniques in a Decision Support System for Group Decision Making

This paper describes a group decision support system based on an additive multi-attribute utility model for identifying a consensus strategy in group decision-making problems where several decision-makers or groups of decision-makers elicit their own preferences separately. On the one hand, the system provides procedures to quantify the DMs or group of DMs preferences separately. This involves assessing the DMs or group of DMs component utilities that represent their preferences regarding the respective possible attribute values and objective weights that represent the relative importance of the criteria. On the other hand, we propose Monte Carlo simulation techniques for identifying a consensus strategy. An iterative process will be carried out, where, after the simulations have been performed, the imprecise component utilities and weights corresponding to the different DMs or groups of DMs are tightened to output more meaningful information in the next simulations to achieve a consensus strategy. Finally, an application to the evaluation of remedial strategies for restoring contaminated aquatic ecosystems illustrates the usefulness and flexibility of this decision support tool.     

Do Currency Barriers Solve the Border Effect Puzzle? Evidence from the CFA Franc Zone

In this paper, we use a gravity model to investigate the extent to which currency barriers explain the border effect puzzle, i.e. the impact of national borders on international trade. We focus on the two monetary unions of the CFA Franc Zone in West and Central Africa. We find that these countries display large border effects, and that currency barriers explain between 17 per cent and 28 per cent of the overall border effect. JEL no. F11, F15, F33     

Exchange Rate Disconnect in a Standard Open-Economy Macro Model

This paper demonstrates that the well-documented exchange rate disconnect can be explained within traditional exchange rate models. It is shown that even if the underlying fundamentals are invariant across exchange rate regimes, equilibrium real exchange rates are more volatile under flexible nominal exchange rates than under fixed rates. In particular, fixed rates reduce the requisite adjustments of the real exchange rate in response to both nominal and real shocks relative to a floating-rate scenario.     

Central Bank Intervention and Heterogeneous Exchange Rate Expectations: Evidence from the Daily DEM/US-Dollar Exchange Rate

In this paper we propose a generalisation of the noise trader transmission mechanism to examine the impact of central bank intervention on exchange rates. Within a heterogeneous expectation exchange rate model intervention operations are supposed to provide support for chartist or fundamentalist forecasts, which forces portfolio managers to adjust their foreign currency positions. The empirical examination of the hypothesis is done by applying a Markov regime-switching approach to daily DEM/US-dollar exchange rates and intervention data of the Deutsche Bundesbank and the Federal Reserve from 1979 to 1992. It is shown that chartists profits rose whenever these central banks intervened on the foreign exchange market. This is not true for those who follow a fundamentalist approach.JEL Classification Numbers: F31, C32, E58, G15     

Employer Recognition of Same-Sex Relationships in the United States: Legal and Economic Implications

Recognition of same-sex relationships is receiving increasing national attention in the United States. This paper discusses the current availability of employee rights in the United States on the basis of marital status to same-sex couples, and both the direct and indirect economic consequences to organizations of providing such rights. Despite legal recognition in some states and by many employers in the private sector, the availability of marital rights in the workplace for same-sex couples remains tenuous, at most. Although the direct economic consequences of same-sex relationships remain a matter of debate, the indirect economic advantages are several, including being an employer of choice and having a favorable reputation in the consumer, stockholder, and applicant marketplace. Employers should counterbalance indirect economic benefits with opposition to same-sex relationships, including product boycotts. The issue cannot be ignored from a legal or economic perspective.