The Effects of Initial Location,Aspirations, and Resources on Likelihood of First Sale in Nascent Firms*

The formation of a new venture includes initial choices that affect the process of start‐up. Primary among these decisions is the choice of location whether to start from home or from an away location. This paper examines the impact of initial firm location choices and aspirations of the entrepreneur on the resource assembly process and the likelihood of first sale. Results show that home‐based businesses assemble different types of resources from their away‐based counterparts. Higher aspirations were associated with greater accumulation of organizational resources. The combined influence of location and aspirations showed that home‐based firms with high aspirations were less likely to achieve first sale. A post hoc analysis examined these affects within a subgroup of service firms and confirmed the previous results. This study suggests that in the initial stages of the new venture, there are processes and routines that home‐based businesses engage in that lead them to achieve first sales in a timelier manner than those businesses that are located away from home. Furthermore, high aspirations are associated with greater scale of organizational resources but not necessarily with achievement of sales. Implications are discussed.     

Agro-Manufactured Export Prices, Wages and Unemployment

This article estimates the impacts of world agricultural trade liberalization on wages and unemployment in Argentina in the presence of individual labor supply responses and adjustment costs in labor demand. After a 10% increase in agro-manufactured export prices, I find that: ( a ) the employment probability would increase by 1.36 percentage points, matched by a decline in the unemployment probability of 0.75 percentage points and an increase in labor market participation of 0.61 percentage points; ( b ) the unemployment rate would decline by 1.23 percentage points; ( c ) expected wages would increase by 10.3%, mostly due to higher employment probabilities.     

Predicting workload requirements for scheduled health care services, with an application to radiology departments.

A model is developed for predicting workload requirements for scheduled health care services. The model is then applied to an actual planning problem for a radiology department. The probability distribution of future workload is represented by the convolution of two families of random variables such that a compound Poisson process adequately describes workload requirements. The model developed herein can be applied to a wide assortment of capacity-expansion problems that are characterized by discrete demands (e.g. number of jobs) occurring in a given period of time, where the amount of time needed to complete each job is a continuous random variable.     

Interests Versus Ideology in the Ratification of the 16th and 17th Amendments

The ideology of Progressivism that peaked in the early years of the 20th century brought with it the 16th amendment, which allowed the federal government to tax incomes, and the 17th amendment, which mandated direct elections of Senators. Both were ratified in 1913. The 16th amendment provided the financing for government to expand its scope, and the 17th amendment created more democratic accountability, which both were goals of the Progressive movement. An examination of House and Senate voting on these amendments suggests that those opposed to the amendments voted against them based on interests rather than ideology.