Language ability and entrepreneurship education: Necessary skills for Europe’s start-ups?

Language ability and entrepreneurial education are seen as essential resources for start-ups operating in intensified landscapes of internationalisation and globalisation. Deemed as the necessary skills for corporate effectiveness vis-à-vis rivals, this paper responds to calls for increased understandings of cultural components as vital to entrepreneurship and the product of institutional forces. Thus, it explores (a) the impact language ability has on start-up expansion; (b) the perceptions of international relations as based on language ability as a tool for cross-cultural communication; and (c) the role of educational context from the entrepreneurs’ perspective. Based on interviews from European online start-ups across three discrete contexts—Finland, Portugal and Sweden—it concludes that contextual trends regarding language and education are founded upon the cultural-cognitive and normative pillars of institutionalisation. Further, by combining actor-context perspectives, it poses that language ability and education are resources borne from the domestic environment which positively moderate the start-up’s international success. Nevertheless, the notion of learnt entrepreneurship remains contested. Taken together, this study contributes by offering deeper insight into the role of context on entrepreneurial tendencies by combining resource and institutional perspectives.     

When hedonic products help regulate my mood

This paper analyzes how affect mechanisms work when consumers form their attitude toward and intention to purchase a hedonic product. The first of two studies shows that when products have the potential to improve moods, affect regulation dominates affective evaluation in forming purchase intentions. In other words, the need to repair one??s mood overrides mood-congruent reviews. However, the affect regulation mechanism is not very stable, and study two shows that introducing a competing source of information, such as product reviews, overwhelms the effect. Results show that when consumers are in a bad mood, product reviews significantly influence their attitude and purchase intention regarding a hedonic product. However, this effect is not significant for consumers in a positive mood because they generate both arguments and counterarguments that compensate for the information received from a third party.     

Effects of the matching fund program on IPO and bankruptcy of SMEs in Korea

Most small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Korea struggle in financing R&D. Thus, the Korea Core Industrial Technology Investment Association (KITIA) was established to implement a matching fund program (MFP) to help SMEs with this undertaking. Applicant firms to the MFP are reviewed first based on their technology levels and are required to attract financing from venture capitalists (VCs), before receiving funds from the MFP. This paper, based on KITIAs MFP applicant data from 2001 to 2004, evaluates the performance of the MFP in terms of the success rate of funded SMEs’ initial public offerings (IPOs) and bankruptcy rates in relation to those SMEs that could not attract matching funds. Propensity score matching was used to eliminate selection bias from the data in order to assess the actual treatment effect of the MFP. According to the result of logistic regression applied to the matched data, MFP apparently did not have significant effects on IPO success and bankruptcy. This implies that MFP needs to allow VCs more time to evaluate SMEs covering qualitative aspects as well. It is expected that this change of structure can provide better performance of MFP in terms of IPO success and bankruptcy of matched SMEs.     

加速培养高层次人才的价值分析

高等院校是培养高层次人才的基地,而人才培养主要通过学校的教学来实现.本文利用“价值分析方法”论述了高校怎样投入人财物,保证教学功能,产出一流人才.     

中国农产品流通发展报告(下)

本文认为,我国农产品物流模式主要有全国性物流、区域性物流、地方性物流和产地物流等多种模式;当前小规模且分散的农产品生产方式与大市场、大流通和多品种、多样化消费需求形成的矛盾,导致一些农产品流通成本居高不下,或因流通渠道不畅,影响了农民的生产积极性;消费需求的变化将推动我国农产品流通向更好、更有价值的方向发展;政府应进一步重视现代农产品流通市场体系建设,坚持以市场需求信息为载体,走新型农商道路,让农民种植有信心,销售有渠道,并真正从农产品交换中获利.     

NDRC Attaches Great Importance to National Development and People''''s Life

Issues concerning national development and people's lives are always regarded as the most importance at the People's Congress. At this year's People's Congress, a series of issues, including GDP growth, investment of fixed assets, real estate prices, energy saving and reduction of polluting emission, energy consumption, etc., have attracted extensive attention.     

哈萨克斯坦共和国的贸易与投资环境

哈萨克斯坦是我国在中亚地区重要经贸合作伙伴。为了帮助我国企业加大对哈萨克斯坦市场开拓力度,本文简要介绍了该国的贸易与投资环境,并对我国企业跨国经营应注意的问题给予了提示。     

TAX EVASION AND STATE PRODUCTIVITY—AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY

In an overlapping generations experiment with multiple families participants can support their parents directly and thereby reduce their tax burden or rely on tax‐financed old‐age support. State productivity is captured by the factor with which total tax revenues are multiplied to determine old‐age support. This factor is systematically varied from 0.75 to 1.25. Tax payments depend on declared endowment. Tax evasion is possible, but monitored. Our results suggest that state productivity influences neither direct support of own parents nor tax evasion. The main effect is that rich endowment triggers relatively low support of own parents and high (and more frequent) tax evasion.