Why are some people more likely to become small-businesses owners than others: Entrepreneurship entry and industry-specific barriers

Why are some individuals more likely to become owners of small businesses than others? We classify industries using measures of entry barriers and proceed to investigate how determinants of entry vary in high- as opposed to low-barrier fields. Claims that neither financial-capital constraints nor the educational backgrounds of aspiring small-business owners predict the likelihood of small-business entry are investigated in this context. These claims of irrelevance, we find, are inconsistent with the facts. The wealth and educational background characteristics potential entrepreneurs possess predispose them to make distinctly different industry choices, both because of the differing rewards available to them and the very different entry barriers they face. The characteristics of potential entrants, in other words, draw them toward some industries and away from others.     

Are Consumer and Brand Personalities the Same?

Current discussions of brand personality refer to a personified brand image, that is, a brand image that can possess any attributes of consumers, rather than brand personality. From a conceptual and methodological critique of the literature, this paper applies the definition of personality to brand personality, and tests the idea using a peer‐rating methodology that focuses on each individual's perception of a brand (the brand × subject structure). The results reveal that consumers reflect their personalities by the brands they use, but the relationship between brand choice and symbolic dimensions (i.e., extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, and openness to experience) is much stronger than the relationship with functional dimensions (i.e., conscientiousness). Moreover, the pattern of this relationship remains consistent across symbolic and utilitarian products, which implies that consumers choose brands with similar personalities to theirs across various products. The study concludes that an abridged personality scale, based on the Big Five, can be applied to both brands and consumers. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Choosing among diffusion models: Some empirical evidence

Is there a ‘best’ diffusion model? How many and which parameters will adequately represent the long-run diffusion process? Two studies using first purchase data for nineteen durable goods are used to systematically compare twenty-four alternative diffusion models: a meta-analytic study, which pools across categories, and an economic approach, which determines the best fitting model for each category individually. A number of guidelines are produced, which stand to improve the choice of diffusion models in forecasting, theory testing, and normative studies.     

Controlling agricultural nonpoint water pollution: costs of implementing the Maryland Water Quality Improvement Act of 1998⋆

The Maryland Water Quality Improvement Act of 1998 (WQIA) seeks to create environmental and other benefits to the Chesapeake Bay through reductions in nonpoint source nutrient pollution. This paper analyzes the economic impacts of the WQIA on agricultural users of nutrients (commercial fertilizers or animal manures) and on poultry growers in the state of Maryland. The net economic impacts to each of these groups are estimated along with some discussion of the distribution of the impacts. Recognition of the distribution of the impacts allows for the assessment of potential policies to address negative impacts. Additional sections of the WQIA are discussed in terms of their ability to shift the distribution of the impacts or to provide partial compensation to those most affected. The WQIA is the most restrictive agricultural nonpoint pollution control law in the US. While the WQIA only regulates nutrient use in the state of Maryland, other states, as well as the federal government, are watching how this law is implemented. Many states are considering similar laws. At the national level, the United States Department of Agriculture and the United States Environmental Protection Agency have issued draft guidelines that will control nutrients from animal operations in much the same way as the WQIA. Therefore, analyses of the economic impacts of the WQIA may be important in shaping policies in other states and at the national level.     

Marriage,Divorce, and Social Safety Net Policy

I study the effects of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and welfare reforms of the 1990s on flows into and out of marriage. I use test scores to predict who is most likely to be affected by the policy changes, and employ a flexible functional form to estimate heterogeneous effects. I find that lower-earning married women are more likely to divorce as the EITC expands, but I find no effect of EITC generosity on marriage. I find little effect of welfare generosity on marriage or divorce flows for any group. My results suggest that there are nonsymmetric responses to policy on flows into and out of marriages.     

A cross‐cultural exploration of materialism in adolescents

To date, few studies have empirically examined specific values with respect to the global teenager hypothesis. In testing the global teenager hypothesis, this study investigates similarities and differences in materialism among 14‐ to 17‐year olds in China, Japan and the USA. Significant differences were found between respondents from the three nations for materialism and discretionary spending power. Discretionary spending power had a significant effect on materialism across nations. In addition, evidence supports cross‐national differences in the psychological structure of the materialism construct. While personal gain and social gain explain two materialism dimensions for the Japanese and American samples, factor analysis results suggest materialism may have alternative conceptual underpinnings in China. The findings of this study generally fail to support the global teenager hypothesis as it relates to the value of materialism.     

Pricing strategies in markets with dynamic elasticities

This paper approaches strategic pricing over the product life cycle while considering the impact of dynamic price elasticities. Extending the work of Simon (1979), a general optimal control formulation is proposed which relies on functional forms which have empirical foundations and can be calibrated in a managerial context. In addition to typical skimming and penetration strategies, dynamic elasticities can lead to saw tooth strategies; optimal prices may, for example, decrease, then increase, then decrease over the life cycle. Several normative results, based on numerical simulations, are presented and compared to those found in the literature.Thanks are owed to Jehoshua Eliashberg, Lydia Price, Wilfried Vanhonacker, the editor and anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts of this research and to Katrina Maxwell for her excellent research support.     

Multi-product firms and exporting: a developing country perspective

In this paper we make the distinction between single-product and multi-product firms to contribute to our understanding of the complex relationship between multinational enterprises (MNEs), exporting and economic development. Using firm-level data for Thailand we show that the number of goods produced causes a larger variation in exports volumes than production volumes. Whilst the number of products and the total volume of exports are positively correlated we find, in contrast to US studies, a negative correlation between the number of products produced and the volume of production per product. We then investigate the characteristics associated with multi-product firms and find a distinction between foreign-owned and domestic firms. The presence of foreign firms producing single products solely for the domestic market as well as those producing many products for export demonstrates the diversity of behaviour of foreign-owned firms in developing countries.     

The electric vehicle revolution: Critical material supply chains,trade and development

The emergence of a mass market for electric vehicles (EVs) offers development opportunities for countries that have abundant resources of cobalt, nickel, lithium, copper, aluminium and manganese. Not surprisingly, developing countries have proposed ambitious plans to expand production of these raw materials. However, an observation from the resource curse literature is that strong institutions are required if they are to mitigate the risk of poorly directed, often excessively procyclical, investment, not least because of the complexity, opacity and price volatility of many raw materials utilised by global EV value chains. This paper examines the outlook for EV demand and associated raw material usage paying attention to the drivers and sensitivities required to assess and track future market transformations. These end use shifts are then placed in the context of the broader supply chain adjustments and trends shaping the demand. For resource exporters, adapting to structural change will require fiscal, regulatory, environmental and institution reforms designed to capture shifting patterns of resource wealth in a way which takes appropriate account of comparative advantages in specific value chains and mitigates adverse environmental and social consequences from their extraction and processing.