Entrepreneurship as a solution to extreme poverty: A review and future research directions

Entrepreneurship is widely argued to be critical for alleviating extreme poverty. However, research on this topic is characterized by diverging perspectives regarding poverty alleviation and remains fragmented across various research domains. This review examines 77 leading academic journals over the period 1990 to 2017 and identifies over 200 articles on entrepreneurship and poverty alleviation. The analysis of these articles highlights three different underlying perspectives: poverty alleviation through entrepreneurship as remediation (actions that address immediate resource concerns), reform (actions leading to substantive institutional changes), and revolution (actions that change the underlying capitalist-based assumptions of business). The analysis of these articles leads to the development of extensive new insights and opportunities for future research.     

A multicultural retreat in exotic serenity: interpreting temple stay experience using the Mandala of Health model

Temple stay is a creative form of religious tourism in Korea that offers an authentic local experience at a Buddhist temple. This study is to describe the experiences of international participants during their overnight temple stay. Based on field research with in-depth interviews, this study result indicates that participants regarded temple stay as a multicultural retreat in a religious and therapeutic setting to promote their ultimate wellbeing. In the intersection of culture, religion, and tourism, this study offers a framework to understand the essence of temple stay experience to modern individuals based on the Mandala of Health model.     

DEMOGRAPHIC TRENDS AND CONSUMPTION INEQUALITY IN AUSTRALIA BETWEEN 1975 AND 1993

We examine trends in consumption inequality among Australian households using the Australian Bureau of Statistics Household Expenditure Surveys collected over the period 1975 to 1993. We find that the distribution of consumption is much more equal than that of income and that both income and consumption inequality rose by significant amounts over the period. However, consumption inequality rose by much less (the Gini coefficient for income inequality rose by 17 percent while that for nondurable consumption rose by 9 percent). We then examine the effects of demographic trends, specifically population aging and changing family structures, and find they account for only a minor fraction in the overall growth in economic inequality.     

Probability distributions for economic surplus changes: the case of technical change in the Australian wool industry

Mullen, Alston and Wohlgenant (1989) (MAW) examined the distribution of the benefits of technical change in the Australian wool industry. Their conclusions are revisited by examining the probability distributions of changes in the welfare measures, given uncertainty about their model parameters. Subjective probability distributions are specified for the parameters and correlations among some of the parameters are imposed. Hierarchical distributions are also used to model diverse views about the specification of the subjective distributions. A sensitivity elasticity is defined through the estimation of a response surface to measure the sensitivity of the estimated research benefits to individual parameters. MAW's conclusions are found to be robust under the stochastic approach to sensitivity analysis demonstrated in this article.     

BOOK REVIEWS

The purpose of this investigation was to explore the meanings recreationists tenting at an agricultural fair associated with the settings in which their fair experience occurred. Using a symbolic interactionist framework, our analysis of data collected through onsite observation and using photo-elicitation guided interviews illustrated that informants' place meanings were the product of interactive processes involving the individual, their social world and the physical setting. These interactions elicited meanings tied to place that were largely independent of the physical attributes that defined the setting. Most significant were specific place experiences shared with family and close friends. The importance attached to these relationships and experiences were embedded in the spatial contexts that encapsulated informants' fair experience. Findings from this investigation shed light on the social construction of place meaning within a built environment.     

Leisure Constraints in Six Chinese Cities

The purpose of this study is to describe leisure constraints as perceived by residents of the Chinese cities Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Qingdao, Chengdu, and Shenzhen. Rather than relying on lists of leisure constraints developed in other contexts, we used the common ethnographic technique of free listing, which allows informants to indicate what they perceive as constraints on their leisure. A second sample of informants rated the importance of 37 constraints determined through the free listing procedure. Constraints in these cities can be categorized, based on their perceived importance, into eight distinct types. These relate to several demographic and sociographic variables.     

Research on entrepreneurship in the informal economy: Framing a research agenda

The informal economy consists of economic activities that occur outside of formal institutional boundaries but which remain within informal institutional boundaries for large segments of society. We draw from diverse disciplines to frame research concerning entrepreneurship in the informal economy around three separate theories: institutional theory, motivation-related theories from a sociological perspective, and resource allocation theory. Each of these theories provides a complementary lens through which to examine the incentives, constraints, motivations, strategies, and abilities of entrepreneurs to operate and grow their ventures in the informal economy. Employing these theoretical perspectives facilitates efforts to highlight the breadth of informal economy research in different domains and lays foundations for future entrepreneurship research.     

Improved instrumental variables estimation of simultaneous equations under conditionally heteroskedastic disturbances

In this paper we develop estimation techniques and a specification test for the validity of instrumental variables allowing for conditionally heteroskedastic disturbances. We propose modified two‐stage least squares (2SLS) and modified 3SLS procedures where the conditional heteroskedasticity is taken into account, which are natural extensions of the traditional 2SLS and 3SLS estimators and which achieve a lower variance. We recommend the use of these modified 2SLS and 3SLS procedures in practice instead of alternative estimators like limited‐information maximum likelihood/full‐information maximum likelihood, where the non‐existence of moments leads to extreme values, and also for ease of computation. It is shown theoretically and with simulation that in some cases 2SLS, 3SLS and our modified 2SLS and 3SLS procedures can have very severe biases (including the weak instruments case), and we present bias correction procedures to apply in practice along the lines of Flores‐Lagunes ( 2007 ). Our new estimation procedures can also be used to extend the test for weak instruments of Stock and Yogo ( 2005 ) and to allow for conditional heteroskedasticity. Finally, we show the usefulness of our estimation procedures with an application to the demand and supply of fish. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Corporate Governance and the CEO Pay–Performance Link: Australian Evidence

We examine the influence of corporate governance mechanisms, namely blockholdings and board structure, on CEO pay–performance sensitivity in listed Australian firms. Results highlight blockholders' role in shaping observed pay–performance associations and their impact varying with their independence and relative magnitude of ownership. Monitoring blockholders increase the sensitivity of long‐term at‐risk pay to performance, better aligning manager and shareholder interests. However, consistent with a shorter investment horizon, insider blockholders increase (decrease) the responsiveness of cash bonuses (long‐term at‐risk pay). Finally, consistent with them affording less‐effective monitoring, larger boards raise (lower) the sensitivity of known pay (long‐term at‐risk pay) to performance.