Entrepreneurship and being: the case of the Shaws

Our paper takes the case of John and Elizabeth Shaw, early nineteenth-century English hardware factors. The sources are almost 200 hundred letters written by the Shaws and their circle. Using these, two readings of the Shaws' experiences of creating a business are presented. The first is couched within a narrative structure of plotted stages and finds the Shaws starting, struggling to, and ultimately succeeding in creating a successful business. Here, their actions within a nascent industrialized economy can be described as entrepreneurial – they successfully pursued opportunity through founding an enterprise within economically and technologically auspicious environments. The second, more phenomenological reading, opens up for consideration the questionableness of their experience of ‘being in business’. Here the Shaws' understanding of themselves (as conveyed in personal letters) brings into question the academic tendency to emplot their story as one of the staged growth and profitability. Specifically, it resists attempts to ascribe to their experience entrepreneurial status, not simply because they did not think of themselves as entrepreneurs, but because the appearance of the business for the Shaws was woven with their lives in ways that belie the narrative direction and coherence that concepts like entrepreneurship give to it.     

Adapting auctions for the provision of ecosystem services at the landscape scale

Auctions, or competitive tenders, can overcome information asymmetries to efficiently allocate limited funding for ecosystem services. Most auctions focus on ecosystem services on individual properties to maximise the total amount provided. However, for many services it is not just the total quantity but their location in the landscape relative to other sites that matters. For example, biodiversity conservation may be much more effective if conserved sites are connected. Adapting auctions to address ecosystem services at the landscape scale requires an auction mechanism which can promote coordination while maintaining competition. Multi-round auctions, in which bidding is spread over a number of rounds with information provided between rounds on the location of other bids in the landscape, offer an approach to cost effectively deliver landscape-scale ecosystem services. Experimental economic testing shows these auctions deliver the most cost effective environmental outcomes when the number of rounds is unknown in advance, which minimises rent-seeking behaviour. It also shows that a form of bid-improvement rule facilitates coordination and reduces rent seeking. Where the biophysical science is well developed, such auctions should be relatively straightforward to implement and participate in, and have the potential to provide significantly better outcomes than standard ‘one-shot’ tenders.     

Understanding gentrification: an empirical analysis of the determinants of urban housing renovation

The “back-to-the-city” phenomenon presented an unpredicted countercurrent in the prevalent tide of suburbanization, and this process of upper-income resettlement in the inner city has been thoroughly analyzed in the urban economic literature. Housing renovation, a process that always accompanies gentrification and constitutes a significant portion of residential housing investment, has been studied much less. Contrary to the expectation that “location matters,” the existing empirical studies have concluded that most neighborhood amenities and structural attributes are insignificant as determinants of renovation. Using a detailed parcel-level data set that documents all residential renovation activity in Chicago between 1995 and 2000, this paper establishes that the characteristics of a building and its neighborhood do indeed influence the likelihood that it will be renovated.     

从零开始——新建一个质量体系的路线图和工具箱

虽然各种质量体系、方法和设计工具之间的不同并不十分清楚--这是所有质量文献面临的共同问题--旦识别出这些质量方法的关键联系,就可了解各体系之间相互关联的概况.     

项目团队:他们的水平到底怎样?

项目团队已经成为现代企业的基本工作单元。满足项目目标、进度和预算的能力将成为未来几年内甄别成功者和学习者的重要标准。但是，取得项目的成功是一项巨大的挑战。2004年斯坦迪什集团（Standish Group）发现他们所调查的51％的IT项目严重超出了进度和预算，并且背离了目标。     

Did working families' tax credit work? The impact of in-work support on labour supply in Great Britain

In-work benefits are promoted as a way to make low-income families better off without introducing adverse work incentives. In 1999, the structure of in-work benefits in the UK changed, and their generosity almost doubled, through the introduction of Working Families' Tax Credit (WFTC). With micro-data from before and after its introduction, a structural model of labour supply and programme participation estimates that, by 2002, WFTC had increased labour supply of lone mothers by around 5.1 percentage points, slightly reduced labour supply of mothers in couples by 0.6 percentage points, and increased the labour supply of fathers in couples by 0.8 percentage points, compared with the programme that preceded it. Other tax and benefit reforms contemporaneous with WFTC acted to reduce the labour supply of parents, though. Without any form of in-work benefit in the UK, labour force participation by lone mothers would be around 45 percent, rather than the 55 per cent we now observe. Participating in family credit, the UK's in-work programme before October 1999, conferred a utility loss as well as a utility gain from the extra income, but this utility cost of participation was lower in the final year of WFTC than under previous programmes for lone mothers, and no different for individuals in couples: this in itself induced more lone mothers to work.     

Institutions, motivations and public goods: An experimental test of motivational crowding

Contributions to public goods can be motivated by intrinsic factors such as warm glow altruism and fairness, as well as extrinsic incentives such as sanctions and payments. However, psychological studies suggest that formal extrinsic incentives may crowd out intrinsic motivations. In an experimental study of individual contributions to a public good we find that suasion crowded in voluntary contributions, while an extrinsic incentive in the form of a regulation led to crowding out. This has implications for the design of public policy where ranges of motivations are present.     

Disentangling regulatory policy: The effects of state regulations on trucking rates

This paper combines state-level data on trucking rates with information on state-level regulations to estimate the independent effect on rates from three different types of motor carrier regulations: rate regulation; entry regulation; and the provision of antitrust immunity for decisions made jointly by motor carrier rate bureaus. The empirical results indicate that state-level motor carrier regulations generally increase trucking rates, with entry regulation having the largest effect in the LTL (less-than-truckload) sector and rate regulation having the largest effect in the TL (truckload) sector. The study also examines interaction effects among the three types of regulations and concludes that the combination of strict entry requirements and antitrust immunity leads to significant increases in trucking rates.This project was begun when both authors were in the Bureau of Economics of the Federal Trade Commission. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Commission or any individual Commissioner. We are grateful to Ed Rastatter of the Department of Transportation for granting us access to the data analyzed in this report, and to Bruce Allen of Wharton who provided them to us in machine readable form. We thank James MacDonald, Paul Pautler and Ed Rastatter for comments on an earlier draft. We also are grateful to Lynn Carpenter, Karen Condor, Effie Georges, Dolly Howarth, Andrew Kim, Georges Pascoe, and Carolyn Samuels for their research and programming assistance.     

The determinants and labour market effects of lifelong learning

Despite the policy importance of lifelong learning, there is very little hard evidence from the UK on (a) who undertakes lifelong learning and why, and (b) the economic benefits of lifelong learning. This paper uses a rich longitudinal panel data set to look at key factors that determine whether someone undertakes lifelong learning and then models the effect of the different qualifications acquired via lifelong learning on individuals’ economic outcomes, namely wages and the likelihood of being employed. Those who left school with O-level qualifications or above were much more likely to undertake lifelong learning. Undertaking one episode of lifelong learning also increased the probability of undertaking more lifelong learning. We found little evidence of positive wage effects from lifelong learning. However, males who left school with only low-level qualifications do earn substantially more if they undertake a degree via lifelong learning. We also found important positive employment effects from lifelong learning.     

Can a Dictator Turn a Constitution into a Can-opener? F.A. Hayek and the Alchemy of Transitional Dictatorship in Chile

Commenting on the Pinochet regime, Friedrich Hayek famously claimed in 1981 that he would prefer a ‘liberal’ dictator to ‘democratic government lacking liberalism.’ Hayek's defense of a transitional dictatorship in Chile was not an impromptu response. In late 1960, in a little known BBC radio broadcast, Hayek suggested that a dictatorial regime may be able to facilitate a transition to stable limited democracy. While Hayek's comments about Pinochet have generated much controversy, this paper neither provides a blanket condemnation of his views (he did not advocate dictatorship as a first-best ‘state of the world’) nor tries to excuse his failure to condemn the Pinochet junta's human rights abuses, but instead provides a critical assessment of Hayek's implicit model of transitional dictatorship.