Influence of perceived risk on entrepreneurial desirability and feasibility: multidimensional approach for nascent entrepreneurs

This study examines the influence of perceived risk on entrepreneurial desirability and feasibility as determining factors in the intention to start a self-owned business. Specifically, a multidimensional approach is taken to examine the different types of risks associated with entrepreneurship: economic, social, time, health and personal risks. The results obtained from a sample of 376 new entrepreneurs in Mexico confirm the fact that the perceived desirability and feasibility have a significant and positive effect on the intentions to start their own company. On one hand, the empirical evidence obtained shows a heterogenic effect of the risk dimensions associated with entrepreneurship on the perceived desirability and feasibility in their behaviour. Therefore, it was found that the economic risk associated with entrepreneurship has a negative effect on the feasibility to start a business, but does not significantly influence the desirability of that behaviour. On the other hand, a significant effect from the risk related to health is not seen on desirability and feasibility, but the negative influence of personal risk is empirically supported for both variables. Finally, the results obtained related to social and time risk are contradictory. Social risk negatively influences entrepreneurship desirability, but a positive effect is observed on the feasibility to create a business. For its part, the empirical evidence obtained does not support any effect of the time risk on the perceived feasibility of starting a business, but there is a positive on entrepreneurship desirability. These results, which are contrary to the traditional concept of risk as a barrier to entrepreneurship, are justified by the vocational nature of this behaviour and by the social sacrifices that are sometimes necessary to be able to make a business work.     

Is the leadership style important in R&D departments in Spanish industrial companies? An empirical analysis

This paper aims to thoroughly look into the effects of the differences between the diverse leadership styles on innovative outputs (intensive, efficient and eco-efficient) in Spanish industrial companies. A questionnaire for the factories was sent and was received between the months of September 2013 and June 2014. A total of 142 valid questionnaires were received. Several regression models were used in the empirical analysis. The results show that charismatic leadership positively induces an intensive innovative output, at the same time as it improves firms’ eco-efficient innovative output. Likewise, the individualised consideration that characterises transformational leadership makes this leadership style produce positive results on the whole group of innovative outputs considered. At the other end of the leadership spectrum, the transactional style causes negative effects on the relationship between innovative activity and innovative outputs, and more specifically, on the efficient innovative output.     

Essential equilibria of large generalized games

We characterize the essential stability of games with a continuum of players, where strategy profiles may affect objective functions and admissible strategies. Taking into account the perturbations defined by a continuous mapping from a complete metric space of parameters to the space of continuous games, we prove that essential stability is a generic property and every game has a stable subset of equilibria. These results are extended to discontinuous large generalized games assuming that only payoff functions are subject to perturbations. We apply our results in an electoral game with a continuum of Cournot-Nash equilibria, where the unique essential equilibrium is that only politically engaged players participate in the electoral process. In addition, employing our results for discontinuous games, we determine the stability properties of competitive prices in large economies.     

Making Chile Visible: Purposes,Operationalisation and Audiences from the Perspective of Nation Branding Practitioners

Chile has become the paradigm of nation branding in Latin America, employing branding initiatives to try to shake off the uncomfortable past of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, as well as to create a ‘new’ image that fits into a globalised and neoliberal world. Whilst there has previously been some analysis of Chile’s branding efforts, the viewpoints of the local actors involved in these initiatives have largely been ignored. This article addresses this issue, examining the tensions faced by different individuals who have taken part in nation branding in the country. Drawing on interviews with some of these individuals, this article examines three areas of tension: (1) the conflicting purposes guiding the practice of nation branding, (2) the difficulties around the operationalisation of nation branding and (3) the controversies regarding the intended audiences for their efforts.     

Country Differences in Material Deprivation in Europe

This paper assesses to what extent differences in the characteristics of individuals (micro‐level perspective) and country‐specific factors (macro‐level perspective) can explain country differences with respect to material deprivation levels. Thus, our work aims to simultaneously consider the macro dimension and the predominantly individually‐oriented study field of material deprivation using multilevel techniques. We make use of the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions. Our results show that country‐specific factors seem to be much more relevant than individual effects in explaining country differences in material deprivation. We estimate that the introduction of country‐specific factors reduces the proportion of total variance due to between‐country differences in deprivation by 72.7 percent, while individual‐level variables reduce this proportion by only 9.4 percent. We also show, through interaction variables, that the effect of sociodemographic characteristics can be shaped by institutional and structural factors, especially by the level of GDP.     

Global financial crisis and dependence risk analysis of sector portfolios: a vine copula approach

We use regular vine (r-vine), canonical vine (c-vine) and drawable vine (d-vine) copulas to examine the dependence risk characteristics of three 20-stock portfolios from the retail, manufacturing and gold-mining equity sectors of the Australian market in periods before, during and after the 2008–2009 global financial crisis (GFC). Our results indicate that the retail portfolio is less risky than the manufacturing counterpart in the crisis period, while the gold-mining portfolio is less risky than both the retail and manufacturing sector portfolios. Both the retail and gold stocks display a higher propensity to yield positively skewed returns in the crisis periods, contrary to the manufacturing stocks. The r-vine is found to best capture the multivariate dependence structure of the stocks in the retail and gold-mining portfolios, while the d-vine does it for the manufacturing stock portfolio. These findings could be used to develop dependence risk- and investment risk-adjusted strategies for investment, rebalancing and hedging which more adequately account for the downside risk in various market conditions.