The role of the entrepreneurial encounter in the emergence of opportunities: Vallée’s Dallas Buyers Club

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to explore the conceptual potential of the Deleuzian notion of the encounter in order to better understand the genealogy of opportunities. We adopt a processual perspective of opportunities. In order to translate this notion to the domain of entrepreneurship, we analysed and interpreted Jean-Marc Vallée’s Dallas Buyers Club. This film follows the creation of the first club in the United States that illegally allowed HIV-positive people to supply themselves with foreign antiretroviral drugs from Mexico or Japan. The article highlights encounters in this process that disturb the entrepreneur’s belief systems and allow him or her to be open to potential opportunity. It finally explores how the encounter may improve our understanding of the political becoming of opportunities within the entrepreneurial process.     

Regionalization, public spending and growth: a stylized model dealing with ‘predatory states’

In this paper, a micro-founded model analyzing the effects of ‘regionalization’ on economic activity is developed. It shows that the spatial division of public competencies can have an impact on the growth rate via the efficiency of governmental choices: initially advantageous for weak levels, decentralization (/reduction of regional size) becomes limited due to the risk of underestimation of the real profitability of public expenditure by local governments (non-internalized cross-border effects). In accordance with the theory, a transversal estimation for a sample of 51 countries for the 1990s establishes a ‘bell-shaped’ relation between indicators of regionalization and the quality of governance.     

Unit roots and infrequent large shocks: new international evidence on output

The nature and magnitude of the economic shocks that have affected the per capita GDP of 16 OECD countries are analyzed over a long period using the outlier method. Strong proof of infrequent large permanent and transitory shocks were found, essentially resulting from the two major wars in the twentieth century, the recession in the 1920s, the Great Depression, among others. We also examine the nature of the output trend by combining different tests of non-stationarity on different GDP series corrected by the outliers detected. It is shown that the per capita GDP series cannot reject the unit root hypothesis in 13 of the 16 countries examined. No conclusion could be drawn for the other countries because the test results were contradictory.     

Optimal Patent Protection in a Two-Sector Economy

This article addresses the issue of optimal patent protection in an economy with a downstream and an upstream sector. The key insight is that higher patent protection in the downstream sector raises the incentives of agents to do R&D in that sector but discourages innovation in the upstream sector because of a market size effect. Hence, higher patent protection in the upstream sector accelerates growth whereas higher patent protection in the downstream sector slows it down. If some innovation is socially desirable, optimal patent protection is necessarily higher in the upstream than in the downstream sector.     

Designing Optimal Crop Revenue Insurance

When the indemnity schedule is contingent on the farmer's price and individual yield, an optimal crop revenue insurance contract depends only on the farmer's gross revenue. However, this design is not efficient if, as is the case with available contracts, the coverage function is based on imperfect estimators of individual yield and/or price. The producer's degree of prudence and the extent of basis risks have important influences on the optimal indemnity schedule. In this broader context, optimal protection is not provided by available U.S. crop insurance contracts and may include combinations of revenue insurance, yield insurance, futures, and options contracts.     

Understanding Configuration and Transformation through a Multiple Rationalities Approach

Why are some transformational change attempts implemented while others are rejected? This study suggests that patterns of underlying multiple rationalities commitments help to explain. Data from four periods of configuration and 11 transformational change attempts spanning a 40-year organizational history are analysed using a multiple rationalities framework. The findings suggest that transformational change attempts are ubiquitous, that transformational changes are more likely to be implemented if supported primarily by value-based rationality, and that organizational members' support for an incumbent configuration increases over time. The conclusion calls for a reconceptualization of configuration, and the inclusion of rejected change attempts in future studies of change and stability.     

On Labour Market Policies and Aggregate Unemployment Outflows

This paper is interested in the modelling of the relationship between active and passive labour market policies and the aggregate unemployment outflow rate. Our model is based on a matching function and includes a simple representation of the competition between various groups of job searchers. The empirical analysis uses Belgian data. Faced with variables that are often integrated of order 1 according to the usual tests but which cannot strictly speaking be integrated, we contribute to an important methodological debate by comparing the conclusions of a classical econometric analysis and a cointegration approach.     

The relevance of currency risk in the EMU

We investigate how the elimination of intra-European exchange risk may affect international financial markets using a conditional version of the International CAPM. We estimate the EMU and non-EMU components of aggregate currency risk and document significant exposures to both. The premium for EMU risk is positive and associated with exposure to the French, Italian and Spanish currencies. The premium for non-EMU risk is consistently negative and accounts for most of the aggregate currency premiums. In the 1990s, exposures to EMU risk declined significantly while exposures to non-EMU risk increased. Hence the adoption of the Euro is unlikely to have a large impact on aggregate currency risk premiums.     

A de Finetti-Kolmogoroff-Nagumo type integral representation theorem for generalized means on masses

We point out that the Consistency, Continuity and Associativity properties of an extended realvalued functionalm on masses are the basic notions to get a de Finetti-Kolmogoroff-Nagumo type integral representation ofm.

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Riassunto Come è noto il teorema di de Finetti-Kolmogoroff-Nagumo formisce una rappresentazione integrale di particolari funzionali reali, detti medie, definiti per funzioni di ripartizione che distribuiscono l'intera massa su un prefissato intervallo chiuso e limitato dell'asse reale.Nel lavoro [2] gli autori hanno esteso la nozionc di media, considerata ancora come funzionale reale, dalle funzioni di ripartizione alle masse (misure finitamente additive limitate e non negative). In questo modo, estendendo ad essa le usuali proprictà (internalità, associatività, etc.), sono riusciti a provare un teorema di rappresentazione integrale analogo a quello di de Finctti-Kolmogoroff-Nagumo per medie continue ed associative definite su opportuni insiemi di masse tight (cio prive di masse aderenti a – e+).In questo lavoro, naturale prosccuzione del preccedente, si prendono invecc in considerazione medic generalizzate (cioè medie che possono assumere valori reali oppure anche i valori – c+) e masse non neccssariamente tight. Si fa allora vedere che le nozioni di consistenza, continuità e associatività per un funzionale a valori nella retta compatta e definito sulle masse non nulle, sono condizioni caratteristiche per ottencre una sua rappresentazione integrale del tipo de Finctti-Kolmogoroff-Nagumo. Si prova inoltre che, a differenza della media ariumetica, le medic generalizzate continue ed associative possono assumere valori non reali solamente su opportune masse non tight.

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Work performed under the auspices of the National Group for Sthocastic Models and Mathematical Statistics (M.R.S.T. 40%) and G.N.A.F.A. of C.N.R.