Market imperfections,opportunity and sustainable entrepreneurship

This research develops the argument that four types of market imperfections (i.e., inefficient firms, externalities, flawed pricing mechanisms and information asymmetries) at once contribute to environmental degradation and that they also provide significant opportunities for the creation of radical technologies and innovative business models. We show that these opportunities establish the foundations for an emerging model of sustainable entrepreneurship, one which enables founders to obtain entrepreneurial rents while simultaneously improving local and global social and environmental conditions. To advance this new field, we offer suggestions for a research agenda focusing on two areas: the relationship between market imperfections and entrepreneurial opportunities, and the emerging field of sustainable entrepreneurship.     

Costs of hospital visits among patients with deep vein thrombosis treated with rivaroxaban and LMWH/warfarin

Background:

For many years, the standard of care for patients diagnosed with deep vein thrombosis (DVT) has been low-molecular-weight heparin (LMWH) bridging to an oral Vitamin-K antagonist (VKA). The availability of new non-VKA oral anticoagulants (NOAC) agents as monotherapy may reduce the likelihood of hospitalization for DVT patients.

Objective:

To compare hospital visit costs of DVT patients treated with rivaroxaban and LMWH/warfarin.

Methods:

A retrospective claim analysis was conducted using the MarketScan Hospital Drug Database for care provided between January 2011 and December 2013. Adult patients using rivaroxaban or LMWH/warfarin with a primary diagnosis of DVT during the first day of a hospital visit were identified (i.e., index hospital visit). Based on propensity-score methods, historical LMWH/warfarin patients (i.e., patients who received LMWH/warfarin before the approval of rivaroxaban) were matched 4:1 to rivaroxaban patients. The hospital-visit cost difference between these groups was evaluated for the index hospital visit, as well as for total hospital-visit costs (i.e., including index and subsequent hospital visit costs).

Results:

All rivaroxaban users (n?=?134) in the database were well-matched with four LMWH/warfarin users (n?=?536). The mean hospital-visit costs were $5257 for the rivaroxaban cohort and $6764 in the matched-cohort of patients using LMWH/warfarin. The $1508 cost difference was statistically significant between cohorts (95% CI?=?[?$2296; ?$580]; p-value?=?0.002). Total hospital-visit costs were lower for rivaroxaban compared to LMWH/warfarin users within 1, 2, 3, and 6 months after index visit (significantly lower within 1 and 3 months, p-values <0.05)

Limitations:

Limitations were inherent to administrative-claims data, completeness of baseline characteristics, adjustments restricted to observational factors, and lastly the sample size of the rivaroxaban cohort.

Conclusion:

The availability of rivaroxaban significantly reduced the costs of hospital visits in patients with DVT treated with rivaroxaban compared to LMWH/warfarin.     

Enhancing ecosystem services in vineyards: using cover crops to decrease botrytis bunch rot severity

Botrytis bunch rot is a disease that causes loss of yield and quality in many fruit and vegetable crops in temperate climates worldwide. The rot is caused by the fungus Botrytis cinerea, a saprophytic necrotroph. In grapes, the presence of the fungus can reduce yield, taint wine and increase its sensitivity to oxidation. In the current work, inter-row phacelia and ryegrass were mulched in situ in winter 2005 and compared with a bare ground control. The mulches were applied under 10-year-old Chardonnay vines in a 10-replicate randomized block design in New Zealand. Functional soil biological activity increased by 1.5–4.5 times in the two cover crop treatments compared with the control, an effect related to elevated soil moisture in these treatments. This increase in soil moisture and a higher rate of soil biological activity increased vine debris degradation, reduced B. cinerea primary inoculum on the debris and decreased B. cinerea severity at flowering (December 2005) and harvest (April 2006). These results show the potential of mulched cover crops to enhance soil ecosystem services, reduce variable costs and improve the sustainability of viticulture and potentially other agricultural systems, in temperate climates worldwide.     

Housing,consumption and asset pricing

This paper considers a consumption-based asset pricing model where housing is explicitly modeled both as an asset and as a consumption good. Nonseparable preferences describe households’ concern with composition risk, that is, fluctuations in the relative share of housing in their consumption basket. Since the housing share moves slowly, a concern with composition risk induces low frequency movements in stock prices that are not driven by news about cash flow. Moreover, the model predicts that the housing share can be used to forecast excess returns on stocks. We document that this indeed true in the data. The presence of composition risk also implies that the riskless rate is low which further helps the model improve on the standard CCAPM.     

Comparison of consumer reactions to price-matching guarantees in internet and bricks-and-mortar retail environments

The present study investigates consumer responses to price-matching guarantees (PMGs) in the Internet environment and contrasts them with their responses in a traditional bricks-and-mortar retail environment. The effect of store reputation on consumer responses to price-matching policies is also investigated in both Internet and bricks-and-mortar retail settings. Two studies using a 2 × 2 × 2 between-subjects full factorial experimental design with two levels of PMG presence (PMG present, PMG absent), two levels of retail environment (Internet, bricks-and-mortar), and two levels of store reputation (no/low reputation, high reputation) were conducted. In study 1 reputation was manipulated using store names, while in study 2 the reputation was manipulated using store characteristics. The findings of two studies suggest that consumer reactions to price-matching guarantees, such as store price perceptions, postpurchase search intentions, and willingness to claim a refund if a lower competitive price is found, differ across the two purchase environments.     

Natural Environments and Leisure among Rural–to–Urban Immigrants: An Application of Bourdieu's Concepts of Habitus,Social and Cultural Capital,and Field

This study explored the use of natural environments for leisure among rural-to-urban immigrants by adopting Bourdieu's concepts of habitus, social and cultural capital, and field. Data were collected with the use of individual interviews with 27 participants, including Mexican immigrants in the United States, Ukrainian immigrants in Poland, Moroccan immigrants in the Netherlands, and Turkish immigrants in Germany. The findings showed that for some immigrants, practices of social capital maintenance became disconnected from recreation in natural environments, while for all participants, nature-related cultural capital had low transferability in a migratory situation. Depending on their position in a new social field, immigrants developed different strategies to use local natural environments for leisure. Some strategies contributed to preserving old habitus, while one strategy (finding substitutes) contributed to gradual changes in immigrants' nature-related habitus. We suggest that embodied and emplaced skills of using nature should be incorporated in the notion of cultural capital.     

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Product Innovation,Process Innovation,and Size

We test the hypothesis that large firms devote a higher proportion of their research and development (R & D) expenditure on process innovation thansmaller firms. According to the estimates, process- and product R & D expenditure rise less than in proportion to size. The size effect is somewhat stronger for process R & D but the difference to product R & D is in no way dramatic. This difference with regard to size elasticity of process- and product R & D is somewhat more pronounced when accounting for possible interrelationships between expenditure on process- and product R & D but remains statistically non-significant.