The ��Teachability Dilemma�� of entrepreneurship

Important factors that determine the emergence of new start-ups are the existence of the individuals’ entrepreneurial motivation, knowledge and skills. Entrepreneurship education (EE) seems to play an important role in developing these attributes. However, a fundamental question still remains: is entrepreneurship really teachable? The article, conceptual in nature, offers a survey about the scientific discussion on the teachability of entrepreneurship and comes out with a phenomenon, which we call ‘Teachability Dilemma’. The insights lead us to claim that future EE should desist from simply teaching knowledge on business creation and rather focus on experiencing entrepreneurship.     

Poverty Reduction and Economic Structure: Comparative Path Analysis for Mozambique and Vietnam

While economic growth generally reduces income poverty, there are pronounced differences in the strength of this relationship across countries. Typical explanations for this variation include measurement errors in growth–poverty accounting and different compositions of economic growth. We explore the additional influence of economic structure in determining a country's growth–poverty relationship and performance. Using structural path analysis, we compare the experiences of Mozambique and Vietnam—two countries with similar levels and compositions of economic growth but divergent poverty outcomes. We find that the structure of the Vietnamese economy more naturally lends itself to generating broad‐based growth. A given agricultural demand expansion in Mozambique will, ceteris paribus, achieve much less rural income growth than in Vietnam. Inadequate education, trade and transport systems are found to be more severe structural constraints to poverty reduction in Mozambique than in Vietnam. Investing in these areas can significantly enhance the effectiveness of Mozambican growth to reduce poverty.     

Global Value Chains,Horizontal Intra-Industry Trade and the Heterogeneous Firm

This paper examines global value chains at the level of the heterogeneous firm. The context is a world of horizontal intra-industry trade, characterized by imperfect competition and product differentiation at the firm level. Standard microeconomic tools are employed to assess the effects of inter-firm dissimilarities in both demand and supply on firms’ responses to changes in trade policy. In this set-up, dissimilarities in firm characteristics play roles similar to factor endowments and technology differences in traditional trade models. When cross-border production sharing (“fragmentation”) is introduced into this framework, those differences in firm characteristics determine the degree to which individual firms will enter into production networks. In this context, horizontal and vertical intra-industry trade elements interact in their effects on firm decisions. Traditional comparative advantage considerations still govern the choice of off-shored activities, while direct competition between imports and exports expands the range of possible outcomes. Finally, it is shown that cross-border production sharing reduces the sensitivity of firms to variations in exchange rates, matching a phenomenon that has been observed in traditional country-level models.     

Laboratory studies and the laboratory paradigm of man: Confessions of an uneasy consumer researcher

Textbook treatments of laboratory experimentation tend to be technical and methodological in a narrow sense, focusing on hypothesis testing. This article raises a more fundamental issue, the model of man emanating from the experimental laboratory. The unilateral, manipulative setting created in most experiments produces an aspontaneous, compliant, and atomistic model of the consumer. The control technology of the laboratory may only be applicable in similarly manipulated environments.

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Zusammenfassung Die Darstellung experimenteller Forschungsmethoden erfolgt in den meisten Lehrbüchern vor allem unter technischem und methodologischem Gesichtspunkt und ist dabei zugespitzt auf das Prüfen von Hypothesen. Dieser Beitrag stellt die tiefergreifende Frage nach dem Menschenbild, das mit experimenteller Laborforschung verknüpft ist.Die einseitigen und manipulativen Versuchsanordnungen der meisten Experimente führen zu einer Sichtweise des Verbrauchers, die allzu passiv und zu wenig spontan ist. Die experimentellen Kontrolltechniken der Laborforschung sind in ihrem Erklärungswert vermutlich auf ähnlich strukturierte Real-Situationen beschränkt.

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Johan Arndt is Professor of Business Administration at the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, Helleveien 30, N-5000 Bergen, Norway. He wishes to thank Kjell Nowak for helpful comments on an earlier draft.