a profile of new venture success and failure in an emerging industry abstract this study examined three types of factors 1 the characteristics of the lead entrepreneur 2 startup processes undertaken during the founding of the firm and 3 firm behaviors after start up including management practices and strategic behaviors associated with new venture success and failure the research involved a field study of 26 small young firms 13 successful and 13 less successful or failed each engaged in the distribution of fresh juices in eight metropolitan centers about 30 of the total market in the united states both quantitative and qualitative data were collected through field work at each firm location a statistical analysis of data collected in a structured questionnaire was the primary method for testing the factors case studies of all of the firms were developed to provide qualitative support for the quantitative findings of the study results from these analyses indicated significant differences between successful and unsuccessful firms in all three categories lead entrepreneurs in successful firms were more likely to have been raised by entrepreneurial parents have had a broader business and more prior startup experience and believed they had less control of their success in business than unsuccessful entrepreneurs successful entrepreneurs seek to reduce risk in their businesses they work long hours have a personal investment in the firm and are good communicators successful firms were those initiated with ambitious goals lead entrepreneurs had a clear broad business idea which provided the adaptive torque required to overcome adversity confrontation and often a troubled financial condition effective startup or purchase required broad planning efforts that considered all aspects of the industry and firm successful firms spent more time planning 237 hours than unsuccessful firms 85 hours the use of outside professionals and advisors for help in solving specific problems during startup was important for success as well as the advice and information provided by other industry participants particularly customers and suppliers most ventures did not have written business plans nearly all purchased firms failed buyers of competitively troubled firms were negatively displaced generally unemployed managers who lacked broad management experience and while often well educated had no prior experience in purchasing a business successful firms were found to be more flexible participative and adaptive organizations these firms had employees who could perform the work duties of others and were likely to be managed in a way that provided these workers with the flexibility to modify their jobs to adapt to changing industry and organizational conditions lead entrepreneurs of successful firms were likely to spend more time communicating with partners customers suppliers and employees than the lead entrepreneurs of unsuccessful firms successful firms sought to become larger firms and embarked upon sales to broad sectors of the market successful firms achieved high market shares with market shares came higher financial returns less successful firms were restricted to narrow market sectors consisting of smaller customers and those more difficult to service while customer service remained an important concern the commodity nature of fresh juices failed to support differentiation and the narrowly focused firm was typified by high product costs and unprofitable operations

heterogeneity in the adoption of photovoltaic systems in flanders abstract we study the determinants of pv adoption in the region of flanders belgium where pv adoption reached high levels during 2006 2012 because of active government intervention based on a unique dataset at a very detailed spatial level we estimate a poisson model to explain the heterogeneity in adoption rates we obtain the following findings first local policies have a robust and significant impact on pv adoption second there is a strong unconditional income effect implying a matthew effect in the subsidization of pvs our third finding is however that this income effect is largely driven by the fact that wealthier households are more likely to adopt because they tend to be higher users are more frequent house owners or own houses that are better suited for pv in several extensions we consider the determinants of the average size of installed pvs and the differential impact of certain variables over time

contours of development abstract new ventures seem to suffer more difficulties and business failures than do established firms also there is a pattern to the mortality with most newly founded businesses lasting only a few years explanations of high failure rates in new ventures have often centered on poor management or have postulated that firms chose inappropriate strategies for their markets and economic environments the present article conceives of new venture mortality as similar in nature to patterns of development that we observe for instance in human embryos or in the formation of new species that is development is an inherently hazardous process some of the specific hazards of development are 1 1 generic entry barriers it is generally not possible for a new firm or product to successfully enter an already crowded stable market where competitors are strong it is more feasible instead to enter a new or growing market or to enter with a substitute product that is clearly superior to those existing or to exploit an unnoticed market opening or to develop competitive strengths secretly without overtly challenging others in the industry 2 2 density of developmental hurdles any new entity must clear a sequence of important hurdles on its way to maturity such as establishing a well ordered office a functional sales channel etc failure at any one hurdle is potentially fatal and a mathematical analysis shows that the likelihood of passing even 10 hurdles in a row is about one in three the earliest hurdles tend to be the most difficult and to crowd more densely than later hurdles particularly troublesome are phase changes where a company first starts business or becomes one thing rather than another within a short period of time 3 3 amplification of maturational error any complex system that grows rapidly and is unable to predict the future perfectly is going to accumulate structural errors that become very difficult to remedy this is a natural and inevitable developmental process as the system grows in complexity and the flaw itself becomes a pillar of the system if an imitator or competitor arrives soon afterward and spots the error he or she will easily be able to retool and redesign a better system whereas the first firm is stuck with old habits tools dies and production methods 4 4 sequence and control in development every embryonic organism has a design template outlined in its dna that is carefully followed both the developing fetus itself and the mother have monitoring and control mechanisms that trigger an abortion if the development process goes awry new ventures lack such mechanisms they are more susceptible to developmental deviance likely to differ from the model successful corporation of their type 5 5 smallness and the asymmetry of luck small things are more subject to the whims of fate than big things amount of resources is the key because new ventures typically start off with scarce resources a bad bounce can sink the company and the probability of at least one such bad bounce is high 6 6 costs of organizing like all of the larger brained mammals a new company such as a medical supply firm must learn through experience much of what it means to be mature costs associated with learning arrive just when the firm is most vulnerable and distracted by other challenges in one sense the message of this article is good news in that managers of failed enterprises need not assume all the blame after all if most new businesses do poorly then failure is the average or typical case and it makes little sense to say that the average manager is poor the bad news is that if our perspective is correct managers of new ventures have less scope to influence the success of their enterprises than is commonly believed the managerial recommendations that emerge are that new ventures are more likely to succeed to the extent that they have sponsorship or capital have managers with a range of experience in previous ventures are given extra assistance of shelter or can ensure a high probability of passing all of the hurdles faced by a new venture

the structure of energy efficiency investment in the uk households and its average monetary and environmental savings abstract socioeconomic and behavioural variables that influence the household s adoption of energy efficiency measures such as cavity and loft insulation and upgrades to the boiler are identified contrary to previous literature by extending brechling and smith s 1994 and hassett and metcalf s 1995 models it is shown that the application of the energy act 2011 which contains provisions on the green deal the new energy company obligation eco and the private rented sector needs to follow a tailored strategy to reach the low adoption households identified by my model moreover for the current adopters of the analysed measures average monetary and environmental adoption benefits are estimated based on parti and parti s 1980 demand model these estimates are smaller than their expected values showing an important energy efficiency gap in the sector particularly low cost measures can bring important savings that can help to meet the pay as you save rule i e the golden rule of the new regulation my model also shows that a poor state of dwelling repair can reduce the adoption benefits increasing the need of subsidies that will be financed through consumer s energy bills however this can increase the number of households in fuel poverty

entrepreneurs perceived chances for success abstract entrepreneurs involved in planning or starting firms must engage in a continuing process of appraising prospects for success these assessments presumably bear upon the preparations they make as well as at some later point whether they decide to make major changes or even to discontinue the business in this study data from 2994 entrepreneurs who had recently become business owners were analyzed to determine their perceived changes of success although previous evidence on business survival led to the hypothesis that the entrepreneurs would only be cautiously optimistic this was not the case they perceived their prospects as very favorable with 81 seeing odds of 7 out of 10 or better and a remarkable 33 seeing odds of success of 10 out of 10 in considering the prospects for other businesses like their own they perceived odds which were significantly lower but still moderately favorable based upon previous research on factors associated with new business success it was hypothesized that those who were more likely to succeed based upon their personal backgrounds and the nature of their new firms would be more optimistic however this was not the case those who were poorly prepared were just as optimistic as those who were well prepared at this point shortly after having become business owners the assessment by entrepreneurs of their own likelihood of success was dramatically detached from past macro statistics from perceived prospects for peer businesses and from characteristics typically associated with higher performing new firms the psychological literature on post decisional bolstering suggests that decision makers in many settings tend to bolster or exaggerate the attractiveness of an option after it has been chosen this coupled with the tendency of entrepreneurs to believe that they can control their own destinies implies that the extreme optimism observed here is probably a typical occurrence for entrepreneurs the findings suggest that it is probably natural to experience feelings of entrepreneurial euphoria when first becoming a business owner with the available evidence it is difficult to judge whether this leads to inadequate preparations or an inability to diagnose problems and make adjustments after the business is started this extreme optimism probably does contribute to the heavy personal commitments observed here in which the median entrepreneur devoted more than 60 hours per week to the business the entrepreneur would seem well advised to form relationships with outsiders such as board members and professional advisors who can be objective and detached in diagnosing problems and assessing objectively the prospects for the business in its current form

unforeseen contingencies and incomplete contracts we scrutinize the conceptual framework commonly used in the incomplete contract literature this literature usually assumes that contractual incompleteness is due to the transaction costs of describing or of even foreseeing the possible states of nature in advance we argue however that such transaction costs need not interfere with optimal contracting i e transaction costs need not be relevant provided that agents can probabilistically forecast their possible future payoffs even if other aspects of the state of the nature cannot be forecast in other words all that is required for optimality is that agents be able to perform dynamic programming an assumption always invoked by the incomplete contract literature the foregoing optimality result holds very generally provided that parties can commit themselves not to renegotiate moreover we point out that renegotiation may be hard to reconcile with a framework that otherwise presumes perfect rationality however even if renegotiation is allowed the result still remains valid provided that parties are risk averse

sources procedures and microeconomic effects of innovation fabio arcangeli paul david frank engelman christopher freeman massimo moggi richard nelson luigi orsenigo nathan rosenberg michele salvati g n von tunzelman two anonymous referees and the participants at the meeting of the committee on distribution growth and technical progress of the italian national research council cnr rome november 16 1985 have helped with various redraftings a particularly grateful acknowledgment is for the insightful and patient help of moses abramovitz this work has been undertaken at the science policy research unit spru university of sussex as part of the research program of the designated research centre sponsored by the economic and social research council esrc earlier support to the research that led to this paper by the italian national research council cnr is also gratefully acknowledged the statistical research has been undertaken with the assistance of stephano brioschi ilaria fornari and giovannu prennushi

renegotiation design with unverifiable information this paper considers a buyer seller relationship with observable but unverifiable investments and or random utility parameters in such situations it is known that contract renegotiation may prevent the implementation of first best outcomes in this paper we show however that efficient investments and optimal risk sharing can typically be achieved provided the initial contract is able to monitor the ex post renegotiation process specifically we focus on the following two features of renegotiation design first default options in case renegotiation breaks down second the allocation of all bargaining power to either contracting party moreover we show that these two features can be obtained in standard rubinstein bargaining games through contractual provisions such as specific performance clauses and penalties for delay or equivalently financial hostages refundable without interest

renegotiation design and contract solutions to the hold up problem abstract this paper surveys the literature on contractual solutions to the hold up problem which has addressed the issue of how to design the optimal contractual arrangement to achieve efficient investments in the presence of contract incompleteness although scholars have argued that renegotiation design is a necessary condition to avoid the hold up problem some recent papers have seriously questioned this condition we mainly show that renegotiation design remains a necessary condition to implement efficient investments

the production tax credit for wind turbine powerplants is an ineffective incentive abstract the us energy policy act epact of 1992 created a production tax credit of 1 5 kwh available for 10 years to promote certain renewable energy technologies including wind turbines this paper argues that the impact of the wind turbine production tax credit will be minimal the argument depends entirely on the nature of the project finance structure used by the private power industry for wind turbine development we show that tax credits can only be absorbed by equity investors if there is a large fraction of equity in the project capital structure this raises the financing cost of wind turbine projects compared to conventional power technology which relies on a large fraction of low cost debt if the tax credit were paid as a cash subsidy the capital structure could be shifted to low cost debt and financing costs could be significantly reduced

energy tax credits and housing improvement this paper investigates whether federal and state tax credits allowed to households who make energy saving improvements to their residence lead to an increase in improvement activity a two period utility maximization model of household behaviour is used to determine the theoretical influence of tax credits energy prices and other factors on the optimal magnitude of conservation capital improvement regressions using various qualitative measures of conservation improvement as the dependent variable are estimated using household level energy consumption and improvement data consistent with evidence from earlier surveys the empirical results do not support the hypothesis that energy tax credits lead to more widespread or more extensive energy conservation improvement activity

cooperative investments and the value of contracting recent articles have shown that contracts can support the efficient outcome for bilateral trade even in the face of specific investments and incomplete contracting these studies typically considered selfish investments that benefit the investor e g the seller s investment reduces her production costs the authors find very different results for cooperative investments that directly benefit the investor s partner e g the seller s investment improves the buyer s value of the good most importantly if committing not to renegotiate the contract is impossible then contracting has no value i e the parties cannot do better than to abandon contracting altogether in favor of ex post negotiation

on growth drivers of high tech start ups exploring the role of founders human capital and venture capital abstract in this paper we jointly analyze the effects of the human capital of founders and access to venture capital vc financing on the growth of 439 italian new technology based firms ntbfs we rely on econometric models that control for survivorship bias and the endogeneity of vc financing as to non vc backed firms the competence based argument that the capabilities of ntbfs coincide with founders skills is confirmed nonetheless once a ntbf obtains vc this coincidence vanishes pointing to the coach function performed by vc investors conversely the view that sees the scout function as the main task performed by vc investors is not supported

what s driving energy efficient appliance label awareness and purchase propensity the eu appliance energy consumption labeling scheme is a key component of efforts to increase the diffusion of energy efficient household appliances in this paper the determinants of consumer knowledge of the energy label for household appliances and the choice of class a energy efficient appliances are jointly estimated using data from a large survey of more than 20 000 german households the results for five major appliances suggest that lack of knowledge of the energy label can generate considerable bias in both estimates of rates of uptake of class a appliances and in estimates of the underlying determinants of choice of class a appliance simulations of the choice to purchase a class a appliance given knowledge of the labeling framework reveal that residence characteristics and in several cases regional electricity prices strongly increase the propensity to purchase a class a appliance but socio economic characteristics have surprisingly little impact on appliance energy class choice

small business growth through geographic expansion abstract although the small business sector as a whole is achieving phenomenal growth an important concern in the field has been identifying the problems challenges and success characteristics associated with the prudent growth of individual firms a strategy utilized by many small firms to achieve their growth objectives is one of geographic expansion this approach involves expanding a firm s business from its original location to one or more additional geographic sites and is particularly well suited for firms that cannot expand in their present location but believe that their products or services may be appealing to consumers in other markets surprisingly despite the prevalence of geographic expansion as a means of small firm growth this is a neglected area of small business research although researchers have examined the common challenges associated with small firm growth a small business that expands from one location to several locations is subject to a number of potentially unique challenges for example during the course of opening a new geographic site a small business manager will be confronted with the task of managing an existing business and a start up at the same time the challenge created by this undertaking along with the other challenges associated with geographic expansion have not been specifically identified an improved understanding of these challenges may help small firm managers maximize their changes of leading successful expansion efforts as a result of the lack of research in this area this study used a comparative case study methodology to develop a theoretical model of the antecedents of effective small business geographic expansion the model was developed in two steps first a preliminary model of the antecedents of effective small business geographic expansion was developed from the existing small business growth literature second using analytic induction the preliminary model was compared with the experiences of five small businesses that have engaged in a growth strategy of geographic expansion for the purpose of developing a more thorough and more valid theoretical model a unique attribute of the sample is that not all of the businesses have been successful in their expansion efforts two of the five small businesses included in the study have had failed expansions providing us the rare opportunity to contrast failed expansion efforts against successful ones the model that emerged from this approach supports the notion that geographic expansion involves a unique set of managerial challenges the consistent evidence across the five case studies indicated that effective small business geographic expansion involves the following six major areas of concern planning for growth managing growth reasons for growth expansion site characteristics a set of moderator variables and expansion performance among the implications of the study is that the unique nature of the geographic expansion process adds a layer of complexity to firm growth that exacerbates the need for planning along with the normal challenges involved with adding structure to accommodate growth a firm that engages in geographic expansion must do this in an unfamiliar location where the market potential and legitimacy of the firm s business concept is untested the consistent evidence that emerged from the cases is that planning helps attenuate these challenges in addition the recruitment and selection of qualified personnel to staff expansion sites is a critical activity along with networking in the expansion site locations to establish organizational legitimacy three variables were found to moderate the relationship between managing growth and expansion performance learning and flexibility were found to have a positive influence on the managing growth expansion performance relationship whereas environmental turbulence was found to have the opposite impact finally a complex set of relationships emerged from the study pertaining to expansion site characteristics for instance the evidence generated across the cases suggested that planning helps a firm develop a set of heuristics for expansion site selection which helps a firm avoid placing a site in an undesirable location

the impact of attribute preferences on adoption timing the case of photo voltaic pv solar cells for household electricity generation we are concerned with micro generation individual households generating electricity using a renewable technology we focus on modeling the adoption probability of photo voltaic solar panels by households using data from ontario canada where a generous feed in tariff is available to households generating electricity from solar panels we measure household level preferences for panels and use these preferences along with household characteristics to predict adoption time intentions we use discrete choice experiments to measure household level preferences and establish a causal link between the attributes of the technology and adoption time intentions using discrete time survival mixture analysis significant preferences included lower cost greater energy savings and lower fossil fuel inflation the conditional hazard probability of adoption at a particular time given no previous adoption showed that the attribute preferences had intuitively reasonable effects the hazard probabilities allow us to compute the cumulative probability of adoption over a 10 year period per household technology awareness has a significant effect on the adoption probability reinforcing the need for effective education our approach indicates the level of heterogeneity in preferences particularly high for investment criteria and co2 emissions these findings suggest that education campaigns should explain more about investment criteria feed in tariffs and environmental effects

networking and growth of young technology intensive ventures in china abstract more often than not new ventures lack established products known technologies longstanding customer relations experienced managerial teams sufficient capital and strong reputations almost by definition small new firms lack the resources of many larger established firms the task of an infant firm and a measure of its success is to make a transition from being resource weak to being resource strong how can resources that are critical for profitable growth be acquired for the resource weak new venture researchers have found that entrepreneurs can gain access to valuable resources and they can seek to achieve competitive advantage through networking activities forming and utilizing available relationships with external organizations can allow entrepreneurs to build credibility gain advice financing and customer access build a positive image and obtain resources at below market prices and obtain channel access information and innovations business relationships with other organizations allow an entrepreneur to achieve desired business results through asset parsimony a favorable view toward networking for new ventures leaves a number of unanswered questions however relevant research questions might include who should the entrepreneur seek as a business partner are all inter organizational relationships equal or are some types more valuable to new ventures than other relationships do firms relying on high levels of networking activities actually outperform firms that less actively seek resources through external organizational relationships the present study provides a specific understanding of the concept of networking for entrepreneurs we propose that networking can be understood in terms of range the number of external relationships to obtain resources and of intensity the frequency of contact of and amount of resource obtained from these relationships this research project evaluates the range and intensity of networking among high growth and low growth entrepreneurial ventures extensive interviewing with managers of six young technology oriented firms in the people s republic of china prc affirmed the importance of entrepreneurial networking managers in the three high growth firms reported greater range and intensity of business networking than did managers of three low growth firms matched by industry and age moreover the relationship between networking activities and growth transcended the stage of firm development where networking range and intensity are deemed important in the growth process new venture success may call for entrepreneurs to reach out deliberately to external organizations to capture needed resources to a certain extent such networking activities run counter to important entrepreneurial motivations of independence and autonomy the concept of networking and the results of this study imply that entrepreneurs need to combine the spirit of independence with the reality of resource dependence and they need to balance personal autonomy with strategic business relationships this study also contributes to the understanding of entrepreneurship in our increasingly global economy particularly in the prc business relationships between the united states and the prc have been expanding rapidly in the last decade many foreign businesses seek license agreements joint venture partners equity participation or channel relationships with young ventures in that country do the same rules of networking apply in the prc as the literature suggests apply in the united states new ventures in this study were found to engage in processes of networking activities consistent with those in the west although networking activities may have different cultural roots firm success appeared influenced by the same principles of networking

ambivalent investment and the hold up problem in this paper we add to the foundations of incomplete contracting literature we study the hold up problem with ambivalent investment where investment benefits the investing party if ex post the right decision is undertaken but harms the investing party if the wrong decision is made in this context we show that the power of contracts to provide investment incentives depends on three factors the commitment value of contracts the amount of quasirents that the investing party can expect in the case of out of contract renegotiation and the degree of ambivalence of investment first contracts provide first best investment incentives when parties can commit to a contract regardless of the type of investment second with sufficiently ambivalent investment if parties cannot commit not to renegotiate a contract and if the investing party s bargaining power is intermediate contracts cannot improve investment incentives above those provided by no contract in contrast a simple buyer or seller option contract is optimal when the investing party s bargaining power is extreme jel d23 k12 l22

a quantitative content analysis of the characteristics of rapid growth firms and their founders a group of firms that is attracting attention are rapid growth firms these firms are of particular interest because rapid growth is an indication of market acceptance and firm success by studying rapidgrowth firms researchers can help all firms better understand the attributes associated with firm growth despite these positive outcomes however rapid firm growth is difficult to achieve and maintain this study adds to the literature through a quantitative content analysis of the narrative descriptions of 50 rapid growth firms and a comparison group of 50 slow growth companies the purpose of the study was to draw from the narratives a list of empirically grounded growth related attributes that are associated with rapid growth firms the findings of the study resulted in the advancement of a conceptual model of the attributes of rapid growth firms in four areas founder characteristics firm attributes business practices and human resource management hrm practices

start up ventures towards the prediction of initial success abstract there are numerous studies on new product activities that try to measure the relative impact of different factors on success or failure the research on new ventures is less comprehensive and often only a few items are considered this article reports on the early results from a research program that is combining the research on both new products and new ventures to come up with a more comprehensive evaluation of relative success factors the literature was reviewed to determine the most significant factors found in prior work a 68 item questionnaire was developed and used with the chief executives of 24 new technical ventures all associated with the rpi incubator or technology park ten of the 17 factors investigated yielded reliable measurements which were then subjected to siepwise regression analysis to determine the relative impact of each factor on the two success measurements used initial quantified success and initial subjective success it should be recognized that initial success does not necessarily predict ultimate success an area to be investigated in continuing studies the two success measurements were not correlated and the correlations with the independent variables were therefore different initial quantified success showed a strong negative correlation with market attractiveness companies entering smaller or more slowly growing markets were doing better than those in the larger faster growing markets initial quantified success was positively correlated with the level of entrepreneurial characteristics exhibited by the leader s these were the only two variables exhibiting significant relationships with quantified success initial subjective success was negatively correlated with market dynamism rather than market attractiveness negative correlation was also measured with both r d intensity and the organic nature of the firm this latter finding is contrary to much of the new product literature which emphasizes the need for individual independence and initiative such may be the case with new products or ventures within large organizations but in small independent ventures the entrepreneur should provide strong control and guidance a positive correlation was observed with the entrepreneurial characteristics and also with the degree of match between the firm s experience and the new business requirements no significant correlation was observed with 1 product or service uniqueness 2 gross margin or 3 strategic aggressiveness the lack of correlation with these variables is surprising but it may be due to the small size of the sample the research confirmed two items that are understood by most scholars and experienced practitioners the importance of the entrepreneur and the importance of pursuing new ventures that match the technical and market experience of the team the less obvious results are those that suggest that success is favored by strong review and control by the entrepreneur rather than the development of employee initiative and independence also the initial success appears to be coming more readily to firms in more slowly growing or less dynamic markets it will take an expanded sample and a longer time horizon to determine if these initial trends continue to ultimate success

constellations of firms and new ventures abstract firm growth is typically described as from the inside out an integrated process of resource capture supplementing the traditional view of growth from within this article focuses on how small firms come into being and grow resorting to cooperative relationships with external organizations through such a process new firms come into being without notable direct investments and grow without significant employment increases the emerging organizational design stresses the importance of constellations constellational structures suggest that organizations do not survive as isolated and self sufficient entities rather they are strongly tied to supportive quasi infrastructural collectives firms grow through various and changing interorganizational relationships we suggest that a growth path of firm disintegration is positively associated with flexibility cost reductions and more favorable competitive position that the success of this path in different industries and countries makes a venturing without investing process more than a small is beautiful fad we find regularities in growth patterns at the beginning an unplanned constellation of firms each geared to solving short term contingent problems planned interfirm linkages and partnerships geared to greater effectiveness arise in more advanced stages in this manner the competitive position of the constellation is improved this article suggests underlying conditions facilitating the growth of organizations that use synergies and the constellations resources effectively

energy tax credits and residential conservation investment evidence from panel data with kevin hassett using panel data on individual tax returns and variat ion in state tax policy we measure the impact of government tax policies to encourage residential conservat ion inves tment on the probabili ty of making these investments unl ike previous work we account for unobserved heterogenei ty in tastes for energy saving activities and its possible correlat ion with tax policy at the state level we find that controll ing for unobserved heterogenei ty is very important based on our preferred point est imate of the tax price coefficient a 10 percentage point change in the tax price for energy inves tment would lead to a 24 percent increase in the probabili ty of making an investment

contract design and non cooperative renegotiation abstract we study a contract design setting in which the contracting parties cannot commit not to renegotiate previous contract agreements in particular we characterize the outcome functions that are implementable for an uninformed principal and an informed agent if having observed the agent s contract choice the principal can offer a new menu of contracts in its place an outcome function can be implemented in this setting if and only if it is optimal for the principal for some belief over agent types which is more pessimistic in the sense of the likelihood ratio order than the prior furthermore the outcome function cannot be too sensitive to variations in the agent s type we show that the direct revelation mechanism which implements such a function when renegotiation can be prevented will also implement it in any equilibrium when it cannot so the standard contract is robust to renegotiation

free riding on tax credits for home insulation in france an econometric assessment using panel data abstract this econometric study assesses the efficiency of the income tax credit system introduced in france in 2005 on investment decisions for household retrofits focusing on insulation measures a logit model with random individual effects is estimated using an unbalanced panel of 23 879 households surveyed over the period 2002 2011 an estimation in difference is performed to identify the impact of the policy the tax credit is found to have had no significant effect during the first two years suggesting a latency period related to inertia in households investment decisions possibly due to the complexity of the tax credit scheme the tax credit had an increasing significant positive effect from 2007 to 2010 before slightly decreasing in 2011 this is in line with changes in the tax credit rates suggesting a correlation with the level of subsidy defined as the situation in which the subsidized household would have invested even in the absence of the subsidy free ridership progressively decreased over the period was lower for insulation of opaque surfaces roofs walls etc than for insulation of windows and depended on individual characteristics the estimated average proportion of free riders varies between 40 and 85 after 2006 in addition we assess the potential bias caused by time varying unobservable variables and conclude that our estimates of the impacts of the policy are conservative

predictors of success in new technology based ventures abstract several recent studies have examined the causes of success and failure in new ventures from these a three level analysis has evolved which considers the management the venture s strategy and its competitive environment empirical testing is still at an early stage but results have generally supported the three level approach however the findings are not very strong this study considers only high potential technology based new ventures the companies on which venture capitalists concentrate it suggests that such firms face unusual time pressures and uncertainty and that their responses to these forces are major determinants of success or failure we propose 11 easily measured qualities describing management the firm s strategy and its environment which should influence how quickly the venture can act these should predict a new venture s performance the 11 attributes are tested on 36 new ventures representing essentially all of the startup investments of a major venture capital firm between 1974 and 1982 the data are taken from the firms original business plans performance is measured from the subsequent financial history using the compound rate of return to all shareholders founders employees and investors the ventures in this sample are primarily based on electronic or information technologies they are highly successful as a group with an average compound rate of return of 98 per year they are also very risky the standard deviation of returns is 171 per year and in 11 of 36 cases the shareholders lost on their investments results from a single sample must always be treated cautiously however several findings are strong enough to merit further study and to be incorporated as a part of a process for evaluating new ventures 1 1 a set of four measures representing all three areas explains 57 of the variance the four completeness of the founding team technical superiority of the product expected time for product development and buyer concentration all behave as expected the first two have a positive effect the latter two have an inverted u shaped relationship with an optimum development time of 12 months and an optimum number of customers of approximately 60 three other measures prior shared experience of the founders competitive conditions and projected market share show an influence when management strategy and environment are examined one area at a time 2 2 these relatively simple measures predict success well probably at least as well as any other study has done using more subtle measures 3 3 the measures used in this study though they have strong predictive power apparently did not influence the young capitalists otherwise the relationships should have been different when the return to venture capital investors was used in place of the total return in fact they were the same this suggests that the venture capital investors did not give sufficient weight to the qualities that we consider and could make better choices by giving greater attention to those measures 4 4 prospective entrepreneurs and investors should benefit from using our model aspart of their screening processes specifically they might calculate a predicted rate of return if it is low say below 30 per year they should examine the reason for the low score and consider whether circumstances exist which outweigh or invalidate that apparent weakness 5 5 an additive model seems realistic that is one can combine dissimilar qualities with appropriate weighting for relative importance to arrive at an overall figure of merit with strong predictive power the specific parameters imply that a company must have a complete management team and score well on two of the remaining three measures in order to be an attractive opportunity more generally the model allows a practitioner to make a rough assessment of the tradeoffs among management product and industry this is important because few if any new companies have all the qualities an investor may desire 6 6 although individual qualities of the founders are no doubt important this remains a difficult matter to demonstrate statistically 7 7 firms exist in an ever changing competitive environment to the extent that these findings are valid beyond this sample they may have been recognized and incorporated in more recent new ventures if so this may change the nature of competition and alter the key determinants of success or failure

determinants of satisfaction for entrepreneurs this study considers the extent to which entrepreneurs are satisfied with their businesses in their third year of business ownership entrepreneurial satisfaction might be viewed as a basic measure of performance it may bear upon decisions by individual entrepreneurs about whether to invest more time and money whether to cut back or whether to close down it may also influence whether entrepreneurs work effectively with their customers and employees for researchers the investigation of why in particular settings some entrepreneurs may be more satisfied than others may aid in the interpretation of past research which has used this as a performance measure this research draws upon a theoretical framework used in investigations of employee satisfaction called discrepancy theory it suggests that individual satisfaction is determined in part by whether there is a gap between actual rewards or performance and the individual s goals or expectations in this research it was hypothesized that entrepreneurs emphasizing primarily noneconomic goals such as doing the work they wanted to do would have higher satisfaction when the business was experiencing lower levels of performance for higher levels of performance there would be no difference in essence the satisfaction of those emphasizing economic goals would vary more with economic performance a related hypothesis was that for this sample of start up firms many of which would be experiencing low levels of performance those emphasizing noneconomic goals would have higher average levels of satisfaction this was based upon the expectation that many start up firms would be experiencing marginal performance so that the gap between goals and performance would be greater for economically oriented entrepreneurs the research also focused upon expectations because one aspect of discrepancy theory suggests that satisfaction decreases if there is a gap between expectations and performance accordingly it was hypothesized that controlling for performance entrepreneurs with higher initial expectations would subsequently have lower levels of satisfaction previous research suggests that membership in particular demographic groups may influence expectations this led to hypotheses that older entrepreneurs female entrepreneurs and minority entrepreneurs would have lower levels of initial expectations this in turn may influence later satisfaction thus it was hypothesized that controlling for performance entrepreneurs in each of these groups would have higher satisfaction because their initial expectations would be lower the study utilized a sample of 287 entrepreneurs who were followed over a 3 year period the data on predictors of satisfaction were gathered in year 1 when the average owner had been in business for 11 months the satisfaction measures were gathered 2 years later by that time there should have been some stabilization in the routines of the business and the entrepreneur could reflect upon historic performance and experiences in judging the extent to which business ownership had been satisfying the data were analyzed primarily using path analysis in which it was hypothesized that certain variables would have both direct and indirect effects upon satisfaction it was found that the satisfaction of entrepreneurs emphasizing economic goals was not more sensitive to economic performance at least within the range of performance considered in this sample for this group of firms many of which appeared to be experiencing marginal performance those emphasizing noneconomic goals did express higher levels of satisfaction it had been expected that those with higher initial expectations would later be less satisfied because they would have a greater expectation performance gap however the opposite was found those who were more optimistic initially were more satisfied later even when controlling for performance demographic influences on initial expectations were examined contrary to expectations none of the demographic traits was significantly related to initial assessment of likelihood of success older entrepreneurs women entrepreneurs and minority entrepreneurs were just as optimistic as those in other groups the relationship between membership in these demographic groups and later satisfaction was also examined no significant relationships were found for older entrepreneurs and minority entrepreneurs however there was some evidence p 07 that women entrepreneurs were more satisfied with business ownership two of the most interesting findings were those related to initial expectations and to women entrepreneurs contrary to discrepancy theory those who had higher initial expectations were later more satisfied not less this may suggest as staw and ross 1985 found in a longitudinal study of employee satisfaction that attitudes are in part a function of stable individual traits those who had a positive view of their initial prospects later viewed the experience of business ownership more favorably regardless of subsequent performance for women entrepreneurs the higher levels of satisfaction may reflect a view that they have fewer attractive alternatives it may also be that they discover greater relative satisfaction from the day to day aspects of business ownership for entrepreneurs and their advisors the findings suggest that particular goals attitudes and backgrounds are likely to be associated with greater satisfaction this may influence whether entrepreneurs stay with marginal businesses for researchers the study provides insight into discrepancy theory by considering its application to entrepreneurs rather than the hired employees normally studied in addition subjective measures of performance such as satisfaction have often been used in previous research on entrepreneurial performance this study casts light on why in particular settings some entrepreneurs may be more satisfied than others

early growth decisions of entrepreneurs the influence of competency and prior performance under changing market conditions the transition between the founding of firms and their first steps toward growth represents a critical juncture in the life cycle of new firms an experimental study was conducted among a sample of 103 owner operators of independent hardware stores in order to examine the effects of their competency and their store s prior performance on their decisions to grow their business under changing market conditions the results of the study indicate that prompt and vigorous actions to grow the business in response to market changes are more likely under the following conditions a high level of competence in the firm combined with poor prior performance a low level of competence in the firm combined with good prior performance these findings attest to the critical importance of competency building in new and small firms as competency appears to facilitate responsive behavior to changing market conditions when the firm s performance has not been favorable such competencies may go beyond technical competencies and may include the ability of firms to build relationships with current and prospective customers which may help the firm anticipate and better understand customer needs the results also indicate that the folklore about the vigorous responsiveness of entrepreneurs across all kinds of situations and in the face of all sorts of adversity may be misplaced or inaccurate the varying patterns of responsiveness found in our study should provide food for thought particularly for entrepreneurs who are fortunate to find themselves in positions in which the firm s competencies are high and its prior performance good under such circumstances our results show that a fat cat syndrome is likely to set in and undermine the responsiveness of the firm to changing market conditions for public policy makers our results suggest that programs which support competence building among entrepreneurs whose firms are struggling may play an important role in assisting them to respond to the changes they so frequently face in today s markets such programs which may enhance survival rates of firms already in existence as well as encourage them to grow may aid in job creation and in maintaining a robust economic environment

complexity and renegotiation a foundation for incomplete contracts the paper considers a hold up model where only one of n future trading opportunities will prove to be efficient and where ex post renegotiation of the ex ante contract cannot be prevented as the environment becomes more complex n the outcome under any message contingent long term contract converges to that of the incomplete contracting model where trade is contractible ex post but not ex ante when trades are costly to describe both ex ante and ex post the incomplete contracting result is extended to a broader class of environments

technology based adolescent firm configurations abstract managers and stakeholders of entrepreneurial firms have an obvious vested interest in understanding those factors that contribute to the success or failure of such firms insight into strategic and contextual factors related to success for 162 adolescent 5 12 years old firms competing within a variety of rapidly changing technology based industries results from this study analyses focus on pinpointing patterns of strategy context and performance in the first stage of analysis six nonmutually exclusive dimensions of strategy were identified 1 technology product leader 2 product market breadth 3 marketing sales expertise 4 quality service 5 customer alliances and 6 specialization second cluster analysis was conducted to group the firms on their overall pattern of strategic emphasis six groups clusters were identified each group corresponded with one of the following four strategy quadrants 1 defenders k specialists 2 entrepreneurs r specialists 3 analyzers k generalists and 4 prospectors r generalists subsequent analysis of variance demonstrates significant differences across the six clusters on three contextual variables environmental instability stage of product development and firm age and on six outcomes rd direct sales and support these firms compete on their reputation in their targeted market segment their ability to find and sell to a narrow range of customers and customer service this strategy occurred in relatively stable and mature industries and resulted in high performance in operating efficiency market development financial stability and overall performance sales growth was average cluster 2 n 12 spin offs reliant on contracts with original employers these firms represent an outsourcing opportunity for larger companies not desiring to develop in house expertise in a product area they are the youngest and the smallest and have products in the earliest stage of development their environment is relatively stable given the dependence of their large customers for their product they are average performers except for having relatively high operating efficiency they trade high performance for the security of long term arrangements with major clients cluster 3 n 39 marketing and sales expertise targeted at narrow market these firms likely assemble and package others technological products or if they manufacture follow the technological developments of their competitors they create value through their marketing and sales expertise and effort and through customer service support they face average environmental instability and stage of product development this strategy however creates insufficient value added for the long term viability of the firms they have low performance on sales growth market development operating efficiency and financial stability and also have low expectations for their future prospects cluster 4 n 23 technology leaders with a high degree of specialization quality and service these firms differentiate their products based on technology leadership in a specialized product domain where high quality and service are emphasized they compete in relatively unstable environments attributable to rapid technological change and are in an early stage of product development they are relatively small consistent with their narrow product domain they have the highest performance on r d results sales growth and future prospects and are very high on overall performance cluster 5 n 24 lacking in a clear strategic profile these firms lack any clear pattern of strategic activity although faced with average environmental instability these firms compete in the most mature product areas therefore while other firms are becoming more entrenched in their competitive positions advantages these firms are floundering they are poor performers and lack long term viability they score low on sales growth market development r d results operating efficiency and overall performance cluster 6 n 46 broad and aggressive product market reach with relatively high quality and service these firms pursue a full line of products sold through a wide variety of methods this approach evolved in a highly unstable environment due to rapid change and growth yet has a large number of growth opportunities they are highly successful in market development sales growth and financial stability they are also highly optimistic about their future prospects this identification of firm configurations can help managers and stakeholders recognize the relationships among strategy context and performance for young technological firms this should lead to more effective managerial decisions on strategic and contextual issues leading to better performance

residential energy use abstract the energy information administration recently published data they collected from the national interim energy consumption survey niecs niecs includes detailed information on 4081 individual households demographic characteristics energy related features of the structure heating equipment and appliances therein recent conservation actions taken by the household and fuel consumption and costs for the april 1978 march 1979 one year period this data set provides a new and valuable resource for analysis we summarized and analysed the niecs data on household energy consumption total energy use electricity use and use of the primary space heating fuel the regression equations constructed explain roughly half the variation in energy use among households these equations contain 10 or fewer independent variables the most important of which are fuel price year house was built floor area and heating degree days

relation of dominant problems to stages of growth in technology based new ventures two studies investigating the growth patterns of new ventures are presented in the first study a stage of growth model theorized to apply specifically to technology based new ventures was develop

energy saving in italy in the late 1990s which role for non monetary motivations abstract the paper studies the relationship between energy saving behaviour monetary drivers and non monetary motivations in italy in a period the end of the 1990s when the energy industry was not yet liberalized there were no energy saving incentive schemes and the environmental sensitivity and information were lower we consider as dependent variable the frequency with which individuals switch the light off when leaving a room as monetary drivers income and perceived energy costs while non monetary motives in our model are measured by proxies of pro environmental attitudes environmental information social pressure and pro social behaviours the analysis is based on probit and logit models estimated on a sample from the multipurpose household survey dataset conducted by the italian statistical office we find that individuals who were less concerned about environmental issues were also more attentive in energy saving behaviour suggesting together with results about income and perceived energy costs that monetary motivations were primary in driving this energy saving behaviour such findings are robust to the inclusion of variables accounting for pro social behaviours altruism by individuals who claim to be more concerned about broad environmental externalities may have adversely affected their propensity to optimize energy consumption

entrepreneurial characteristics and the size of the new firm a model and an econometric test this paper examines entrepreneurial influences on the size of the new firm theory and previous empirical research indicate that the entrepreneurial attributes most likely to influence the characteristics and performance of new firms are motivation workskills and information the results of a regression analysis confirm these hypotheses when turnover and total assets are the dependent variables but are less conclusive when employment is the dependent variable possibly the most interesting finding is that the entrepreneurs who create the most jobs are those who are highly motivated have managerial skills and whose firms are in the manufacturing sector

a theory of debt and equity diversity of securities and manager shareholder congruence this paper shows how the optimal financial structure of a firm complements incentive schemes to discipline managers and how the securities return streams determine the claim holders incentives to intervene in management the theory rationalizes 1 the multipucity of securities 2 the observed correlation between return streams and control rights of securities and 3 the partial congruence between managerial and equity holder preferences over policy choices and monetary rewards as well as the low level of interference of equity in management the theory also offers new prospects for a reappraisal of the earlier corporate finance literature

what holds back high growth firms evidence from uk smes high growth firms are seen as vital for economic growth it is important for policy and theory to consider the barriers faced by firms achieving high growth and those with the potential to do so this article uses data for 4 858 uk smes to investigate the obstacles perceived by two sets of firms 1 firms in periods of high growth and 2 potential high growth firms which are observationally similar but are not achieving high growth the results suggest high growth firms perceive problems in six areas recruitment skill shortages obtaining finance cash flow management skills and finding suitable premises potential high growth firms feel held back by the economy obtaining finance cash flow and their management skills but are less likely to perceive regulation is a problem the results have implications for theory on high growth firms and policies focussed at them

characteristics distinguishing high growth ventures abstract the purpose of this study is to define characteristics that distinguish high growth from low growth companies in this examination particular emphasis is focused on characteristics that lend themselves to objective evalnation in previous studies great emphasis has been placed upon characteristics related to the personal capabilities of entrepreneurs although such characteristics are widely accepted as being of great importance they are subjective and evaluated only with great difficulty two pools of companies were examined in the course of this study each company responded to a comprehensive questionnaire and provided longitudinal data related to a wide variety of operating characteristics the first pool of companies the reynolds data base consisted of relatively young small companies the second pool price waterhouse clients included companies that were generally larger and more mature than those in the reynolds data base the distinction between the samples permitted us to consider how the set of growth characteristics varies at different stages in a company s development discriminant analysis of both samples yielded the following insights 1 in both pools it was important that management have substantial industry experience no other characteristic related to the experience or capability of the entrepreneur or entrepreneurial team was identified as distinguishing between high and low growth 2 an interesting strategic profile became apparent based upon the examination of the two groups in the reynolds sample the high growth companies were more focused than their low growth counterparts with more revenue being generated by a single product conversely in the price waterhouse sample the high growth companies displayed a greater propensity for market and product diversification than did the slow growth companies in that pool these results seem logical in that smaller companies have fewer resources and therefore may perform better by focusing their effort conversely more mature companies need to expand growth prospects and hedge against overreliance on any particular opportunity 3 growth companies in the reynolds data base ran leaner than the low growth companies in that sample with fewer managers slimmer payrolls as a percentage of sales and more productive uses of assets growth companies in the price waterhouse sample were more likely to have balanced management teams than the price waterhouse slow growers leanness was not a discriminating variable in this group as one might expect more mature companies would require a broader array of talents and would be better able to afford balanced teams 4 rapid market growth and the ability to develop close customer contacts were identified as discriminating characteristics in the price waterhouse sample neither were identified in the reynolds data base companies in the reynolds data base were not asked to report on market growth and were probably too young to have established much in the way of customer relationships these companies did however report a greater utilization of advanced technology

continued entrepreneurship ability need and opportunity as determinants of small firm growth the purpose of this research was to enhance our understanding of the growth or non growth of individual small businesses growth here being regarded as an indication of continued entrepreneurship taken together earlier studies have suggested a very large number of determinants of entrepreneurship and growth yet no very strong explanatory factors emerge it is argued here that all of the specific lowlevel explanatory variables that have previously been used can be regarded as aspects of either of three major determinants ability need and opportunity a model based on these three major factors is developed and the results of previous studies are reviewed in the light of this more abstract model in the model objective factors are separated from their subjective counterparts and it is suggested that subjective factors or reality as perceived influence growth motivation and direct behavior although objective factors only partly determine subjective perceptions they can have important direct effects on outcomes i e actual growth using survey data from more than 400 swedish small firms and applying partial least squares analysis which is a technique for analyzing structural relations among indirectly measured concepts the parameters of the model are empirically estimated the results largely lend support for the usefulness of the model more specifically the analyses suggest that 1 objective measures of ability need and opportunity can explain a substantial share of the variation in actual historical growth rates 2 objective and subjective measures of these three factors can explain a substantial share of the variation in growth motivation 3 in both cases need related issues appear more important than ability and opportunity which would mean that satiation is the major reason why small firms stop growing 4 subjective factors contain growth relevant information that is not captured by objective measures 5 direct effects of objective variables on actual growth can be traced 6 some relations are consistent whereas others seem to vary considerably across industries and 7 while the model largely gains support the analyses also suggest some additional relations that are theoretically reasonable and may deserve consideration in future studies finally it is argued that for the advancement of entrepreneurship research conceptual models at a higher level of abstraction like the one developed in this article are needed such models can add meaning to empirical facts and have the virtue of reducing complexity without assuming away too many potential contingencies it is also suggested that entrepreneurship is a matter of degree and can show itself in different ways such as start up growth innovation etc in practice the sole measure of entrepreneurship has often been a person s current status as being or not being the founder or owner manager of a small firm in future studies the use of a composite measure of the degree of entrepreneurship may prove more fruitful than the comparison of characteristics approach has been

technology adoption subsidies an experiment with managers we evaluate the impact of technology adoption subsidies on investment behavior in an individual choice experiment in a laboratory setting professional managers are confronted with an intertemporal decision problem in which they have to decide whether or not to search for and possibly adopt a new technology technologies differ in the per period benefits they yield and their purchase price increases with the per period benefits provided we introduce a subsidy on the more expensive technologies that also yield larger per period benefits and find that the subsidy scheme induces agents to search for and adopt these more expensive technologies even though the subsidy itself is too small to render these technologies profitable we speculate that the result is driven by the positive connotation affect that the concept subsidy invokes

energy tax credits and residential conservation investment evidence from panel data using panel data on individual tax returns and variation in state tax policy we measure the impact of government tax policies to encourage residential conservation investment on the probability of making these investments unlike previous work we account for unobserved heterogeneity in tastes for energy saving activities and its possible correlation with tax policy at the state level we find that controlling for unobserved heterogeneity is very important based on our preferred point estimate of the tax price coefficient a 10 percentage point change in the tax price for energy investment would lead to a 24 percent increase in the probability of making an investment

demand for energy and insulation abstract the consumer s problem of choosing an optimal level of energy consumption and insulation is modelled as a two stage optimization problem the choice of energy consumption given the level of insulation is posed as a periodic control problem the solution to which is written as a function of the insulation level choice of the insulation level is then a standard scalar optimization problem the method permits construction of theoretically sound demand functions the model implies a unique value for the consumer s tradeoff between comfort and expense and a range of values for his discount rate

residential energy efficient technology adoption energy conservation knowledge and attitudes an analysis of european countries abstract relationships between measures of household energy use behavior and household characteristics are estimated using a unique dataset of approximately 5000 households in 10 eu countries and norway family age composition patterns are found to have a distinct impact on household energy use behavior households with young children are more likely to adopt energy efficient technologies and energy conservation practices and place primary importance on energy savings for environmental reasons by contrast households with a high share of elderly members place more importance on financial savings and have lower levels of technology adoption energy conservation practice use and knowledge about household energy use education levels also matter with higher levels associated with energy efficient technology adoption and energy conservation practice use similarly university education increases the stated importance of energy savings for greenhouse gas reductions and decreases the stated importance for financial reasons education impacts also vary greatly across survey countries and there is some evidence of an eastern western european divide with respect to attitudes towards energy savings these cross country differences highlight the need to balance a common eu energy efficiency policy framework with flexibility for country specific policies to address unique constraints to energy efficient technology and conservation practice adoption

the cost of growth small firms and the pricing of bank loans drawing upon data from the 2007 uk survey of sme finance the current analysis is concerned with the extent to which growth firms are discriminated on price in loan markets or more simply the extent to which growth firms pay more for credit given relatively small turndown rates historically vos et al in j bank finance 31 9 2648 2672 2007 higher credit prices may be a more substantial growth constraint than the access to finance issues that have dominated the academic literature to date to this end we observe inter alia that firms who have recorded recent high growth are more likely to pay higher interest rates for the loan they obtained moreover small sized firms who intend to grow through the introduction of new products exhibit a higher probability of paying more for credit than their peers finally acknowledging that banks are not risk funders we discuss the potential policy implications of these findings

household level innovation diffusion model of photo voltaic pv solar cells from stated preference data we focus on predicting the adoption time probabilities of photo voltaic solar panels by households using discrete choice experiments and an innovation diffusion model the primary objective of this research is cohesively mapping the theory of disruptive innovation into diffusion of innovations to aid policy makers by linking two critical uncertainties of new technology 1 whether households prefer the new attributes of the new technology and how these preferences vary by market segments and 2 when are they going to adopt if at all our study uses recent developments of discrete choice experiments and establishes a causal link between the attributes of the technology attitudinal constructs and socio demographics and adoption time probabilities using the bass diffusion model the data was collected from ontario a province of canada the innovation diffusion model allows us to compute the cumulative probability of adoption over time per household technology awareness and energy cost saving have a significant effect on the adoption probability reinforcing the need for effective education these findings also suggest that campaigns should explain more about investment criteria feed in tariffs and environmental attributes this study findings call for a need to use seeding strategies to accelerate exogenous word of mouth wom for this new technology

are they efficient in the middle using propensity score estimation for modeling middlemen in indian corporate corruption corrupt regulatory environment encourages firms to deploy middlemen for speedy and assured acquisition of different services from regulatory agencies using a world bank dataset of 2210 indian manufacturing firms this article examines how firms with middlemen deal with corrupt governmental agencies for its operational efficiency our results demonstrate that deployment of middlemen by the firms is often accompanied by a substantial increase in operational delay relatively trigger more consumption of senior management s time on regulatory disentanglement enhance the likelihood tendency to pay bribe and likely to face more court cases as a means of restitution of legal rights as firm specific attributes may contaminate our preliminary results we utilized the propensity score framework to examine relationships among variables of interests our study contributes to the inconspicuous part of the corruption literature by attempting to present a comprehensive but indirect assessment of the functions of middlemen that predominantly remained unattended except some scattered descriptive case based anecdotal presentations

what makes a new business start up successful this paper seeks a good measure of new business performance and then explains this measure by various dimensions of business strategy three criteria are used to create a one dimensional ordinal ranking of high medium and low performance for new business starts employment growth return on capital employed and labour productivity it is shown that statistical cluster analysis provides a convincing separation of a sample of new business starts into high medium and low performance categories using a minimum distance criterion for clustering an ordinal logit model with selection is then used to explain this performance ranking the results indicate that many widely discussed features of small business strategy have little or even negative impact on performance of the numerous aims that owner managers may adopt survival growth etc only one appears to have a major impact on performance the pursuit of the highest rate of return on investment many entrepreneurial perceptions of their own capabilities appear false or unimportant with the exception of organisational features and systems

the mirrlees approach to mechanism design with renegotiation with applications to hold up and risk sharing the paper studies the implementation problem first analyzed by maskin and moore 1999 in which two agents observe an unverifiable state of nature and may renegotiate inefficient outcomes following play of the mechanism we develop a first order approach to characterizing the set of implementable utility mappings in this problem paralleling mirrlees s 1971 first order analysis of standard mechanism design problems we use this characterization to study optimal contracting in hold up and risk sharing models in particular we examine when the contracting parties can optimally restrict attention to simple contracts such as noncontingent contracts and option contracts where only one agent sends a message

moral hazard and capital structure dynamics we base a contracting theory for a start up firm on an agency model with observable but nonverifiable effort and renegotiable contracts two essential restrictions on simple contracts are imposed the entrepreneur must be given limited liability and the investor s earnings must not decrease in the realized profi to f thefirm all message game contracts with pure strategy equilibria and no third parties are considered within this class of contracts equilibria and regardless of who has the renegotiating bargaining power debt and convertible debt maximize the entrepreneur s incentives to exert effort these contracts are optimal if the entrepreneur has the bargaining power in renegotiation if the investor has the bargaining power the same is true unless debt induces excessive effort in the latter case a non debt simple contract achieves efficiency the non contractibility of effort does not lower welfare thus when the non contractibility of effort matters our results mirror typical capital structure dynamics an early use of debt claims followed by a switch to equity like claims

does relationship specific investment depend on asset ownership evidence from a natural experiment in the housing market the classic hold up model grossman and hart 1986 predicts that allocations of asset ownership which expose a party to expropriation reduce relationship specific investments by this party in the empirical context of t he housing market i show that the hold up model predicts more relationship specific investments such as bathroom renovations in owner occupied housing than in rental housing i confirm this prediction for the german housing market to ob tain an exogenous variation of asset home ownership i use the natural experiment of the german reunification under the communist regime ownership exist ed but was economically meaningless it was a quasi random by product of dwelling choice yet after reunification ownership unexpectedly reacquired legal fo rce

dynamic capabilities and new product development in high technology ventures an empirical analysis of new biotechnology firms abstract in industries populated by entrepreneurial high technology firms the rapid development of new products is viewed as a key determinant of success developing a portfolio of new products is necessary to gain early cash flows external visibility and legitimacy early market share and increase the likelihood of survival schoonhoven eisenhardt and lymman 1990 in addition recent research has shown that new product development improves a firm s ability to raise money through an initial public offering deeds decarolis and coombs 1997 this paper develops a model of new product development which is tested on a sample of 94 pharmaceutical biotechnology companies we hypothesize that new product development capabilities are a function of a firm s scientific technological and managerial skills to test this relationship we develop several firm specific measures in an attempt to triangulate in on the core construct of firm specific new product development capabilities some important implications for entrepreneurs managers of high technology firms flow from our results first entrepreneur managers need to view the choice of geographic location as an important strategic decision which will impact their firm s access to the skilled technical personnel and the streams of knowledge our results indicate that a choice location has a significant concentration of similar firms but the level has not yet reached a point where competition for resources in the local environment offsets any advantages of the location in the case of biotechnology this would seem to indicate that the prime locations would be expanding areas such as san diego seattle and philadelphia rather then the established locations of silicon valley and boston second as scientific knowledge plays an ever more important role in a firm s success the quality of the firm s scientific team is a critical ingredient in a firm s new product development capability but how do you evaluate the quality of scientific personnel our results indicate that there is a strong positive relationship between the impact as measured by citations of a team s prior research in the academic community and the productivity of that team in a commercial research laboratory therefore the judgement of a scientific field captured by citations or perhaps expert judgement should prove to be a useful tool when evaluating personnel for a firm s research team third the results from our measures of ceo experience and the percentage of the top management team with a ph d are interesting as expected the prior experience of ceo in managing a commercial research facility enhances a firm s new product development capabilities however results for our top management team variable appears to indicate that the over reliance on technical personnel in the management of the organization detracts from the product development process taken together these results seem to imply that it is important that the leadership of the organization have knowledge of and experience in managing the new product development process but that diverting the firm s scientific personnel s energies away from the laboratory and into the management of the organization maybe counter productive therefore what a high technology venture appears to need is leadership that understands and has experience in the new product development process but which is separate and distinct from the scientific team this type of leadership keeps the scientific team focused on research and development and out of the boardroom

the network dynamics of international new ventures this study uses multi site case research to advance a set of propositions regarding the network dynamics of early stage international new ventures the investigative approach builds on arguments that network theory and analysis are fundamental to international entrepreneurship in the spirit of cross disciplinary research perspectives from the entrepreneurship literature are embraced to help inform our understanding of international new venture networks

the role of alliances in the early development of high growth firms rapid growth is sought after but may overstretch a firm s resources can alliances supply compensating support for rapidly growing firms longitudinal data on firms in a technology cluster are used to investigate rapid growth in relation to alliances and other factors known to be associated with firm growth rapid firm growth appears beneficial in terms of higher survival rates and earlier attainment of mid size but is rarely sustained alliances are predictors of rapid growth as are international operations venture capital is not directly associated with firm growth in the findings but there is a high incidence of alliances among venture capital backed firms copyright 2014 the author 2013 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

the main support mechanisms to finance renewable energy development considering that the major part of greenhouse gases is carbon dioxide there is a global concern aimed at reducing carbon emissions additionally major consumer countries are looking for alternati

corporate ventures into industrial markets dynamics of aggressive entry abstract this article reports a study of the effect of aggressive entry by firms venturing into new industrial markets there are three main sets of results first there is a significant correlation between the competitive attractiveness of the target industry and the initial share objective set by the corporation venturing into that industry second the downstream share objective set at the launch of the venture is significantly correlated with several key marketing strategy and investment strategy options made by the firm at the start of operations third if most of these key strategy decisions are made under the assumption that a high share position will rapidly be achieved their resulting performance in terms of both market share and roi is superior to firms which enter with less aggressive share aspirations these results are particularly appealing to the large established firm which has the resources and thus can both afford to absorb the cost of failure and afford to make significant front end investments in aggressive initial marketing expenses and investments in initial plant capacity for such firms a feasible strategy for a new venture into an industrial market could be to if possible but not essential seek industries markets to enter which are less likely to provoke rivalrous responses set aggressive market share targets invest aggressively in initial plant capacity develop aggressive sales force sales promotion advertising service quality and or pricing programs relative to competitors as appropriate to the particular industry being entered the reason we suggest that the programs be aggressive as appropriate is that different strategic options are likely to be more effective in one industry than another for instance aggressive advertising and sales promotions could be more effective for consumables while aggressive sales calling programs and superior service delivery could be the more effective route for capital goods businesses

estimating energy conservation patterns of greek households abstract this paper develops an empirical model to investigate the main determinants of household energy conservation patterns in greece employing cross section data in the empirical analysis household energy conserving choices models are employed using a discrete and a latent trait variable respectively as a dependent variable the results show that socio economic variables such as consumers income and family size are suitable to explain differences towards energy conservation preferences in addition the results suggest that electricity expenditures and age of the respondent are negatively associated with the number of energy conserving actions that a consumer is willing to adopt finally other variables such as environmental information feedback and consciousness of energy problems are characteristics of the energy saver consumer by evaluating consumer s decision making process with regards to energy conservation measures we are able to formulate and propose an effective energy conservation framework for greece an energy policy framework is among the main prerequisites not only to achieve sustainable development but also to maintain consumers quality of life

a tale of two market failures technology and environmental policy abstract market failures associated with environmental pollution interact with market failures associated with the innovation and diffusion of new technologies these combined market failures provide a strong rationale for a portfolio of public policies that foster emissions reduction as well as the development and adoption of environmentally beneficial technology both theory and empirical evidence suggest that the rate and direction of technological advance is influenced by market and regulatory incentives and can be cost effectively harnessed through the use of economic incentive based policy in the presence of weak or nonexistent environmental policies investments in the development and diffusion of new environmentally beneficial technologies are very likely to be less than would be socially desirable positive knowledge and adoption spillovers and information problems can further weaken innovation incentives while environmental technology policy is fraught with difficulties a long term view suggests a strategy of experimenting with policy approaches and systematically evaluating their success

an econometric analysis of residential expenditures on energy conservation and renewable energy sources abstract economic theory suggests that residential expenditures on energy conservation and renewable energy sources will be determined by the ability of households to purchase conservation inputs their incentive to invest in conserving energy the energy efficiency of existing homes and miscellaneous factors such as climate and age of the home owner empirical analyses of energy related expenditures reported on individual income tax returns confirm the importance of household income energy price increases and climate conditions in determining energy conservation investments income tax credits are also found to have stimulated residential spending on conservation and renewable energy

stumblers and stars in the management of rapid growth this article examines the problems of managing a rapid growth firm we contend that instead of being a time for entrepreneurial celebration and relief a period of over 50 growth is a time for wariness and some very difficult decisions such firms face a fragile transition they are beyond being intimate cohesive entrepreneurial ventures but they have not yet become secure stable entities not only are they in flux but these firms are often disoriented by the pace at which change is occurring firms such as atari cray research cullinet osborne computers people express and rolm recently have faced or now face these challenges with very different degrees of success this article presents observations drawn from several sources a study of thirty rapid growth firms which we have underway literature and press accounts of rapid growth and our consulting and discussions with executives in such firms while far from definitive the article reports several themes that are very pronounced in the situations we have studied these themes are of two types 1 recurring challenges and traps faced by rapid growth companies and 2 characteristics af firms which seem to avoid or surmount these traps these are the four fundamental challenges that we see confronting rapid growth firms 1 1 instant size these firms double and triple in size very quickly this in turn creates problems of disaffection inadequate skills and inadequate systems 2 2 a sense of infallibility by virtue of their success to date rapid growth firms often view their strategies and behaviors as infallible the unfortunate irony is that they become convinced of their wisdom while the environment is turbulent and large competitors are entering 3 3 internal turmoil as a social organism a firm growing at 50 per year is under great strain there is a stream of new faces people who do not know each other and who do not know the company decision making suffers turf battles abound and people burn out 4 4 extraordinary resource needs rapid growth firms are typically cash starved instead of abundance they often face a bare bones existence each of these challenges calls for its own solutions but we have observed some overarching themes in firms that have successfully traversed a period of rapid growth the chief executive is able to envision and anticipate the firm as a larger entity the team needed for tomorrow is hired and developed today the original core vision of the firm is constantly and zealously reinforced new big company processes are introduced gradually as supplements to rather than replacements for existing approaches hierarchy is minimized employees hold a financial stake in the firm beyond developing these themes for success the article concludes with a brief discussion of the effectiveness of owner founders in rapid growth situations

strategic alliances and the rate of new product development an empirical study of entrepreneurial biotechnology firms abstract a key to success in industries populated by entrepreneurial high technology firms is the rate at which the firm develops new products rapid product development creates significant advantages for entrepreneurial firms including access to early cash flows external visibility legitimacy and early market share the higher a firm s rate of new product development the more likely the firm is to achieve and maintain these first mover advantages this is particularly true in industries such as pharmaceuticals where the effectiveness of patent protections leads to patent races in which a winner take all scenario exists but even in industries where patent protection is weak the advantages of being first in terms of market preemption reputation effects experience curve effects etc can still be of major importance we argue that one way an entrepreneurial firm can increase its rate of new product development is by entering into strategic alliances with firms that possess complementary assets the basic proposition advanced is that a firm s rate of new product development is a positive function of the number of strategic alliances that it has entered however the relationship between strategic alliances and the rate of new product development may be nonlinear specifically although strategic alliances may initially have positive effects on the rate of new product development this relationship may exhibit diminishing returns moreover past some point it is possible that negative returns may set in thus the relationship between the number of alliances and the rate of new product development may be an inverted u shape two reasons can be given to support such a relationship first not all alliances will make an equal contribution to increasing the rate of new product development the economic law of diminishing returns suggests that the more alliances a firm engages in the more likely it is to enter some alliances whose marginal contribution is relatively minor such a phenomenon on its own is enough to suggest diminishing returns second gaining access to complementary assets through strategic alliances is not without risks malperformance may occur when the firm discovers that the complementary assets provided by the partner are a poor match fail to live up to the promises made by the partner or a partner may opportunistically exploit an alliance expropriating the firm s know how while providing little in return these problems arise because the effectiveness with which the firm can select and manage alliance partners is likely to be negatively related to the number of alliances the firm is managing due to information processing requirements the quality of partner search and the ability to monitor the partners actions will decline as the firm increases the number of alliances in which it is involved this reasoning leads to a prediction that past some point alliances will be increasingly vulnerable to malperformance this raises not only the possibility of diminishing returns to the number of alliances but also negative returns as the number of alliances increases past some critical point this proposed relationship between alliances and new product development was tested on a sample of 132 biotechnology firms the results provide strong evidence to support the inverted u shaped relationship between the number of strategic alliances and the rate of new product development therefore at low levels strategic alliances are positively related to new product development but as the number of alliances increases the benefits begin to decrease and at high levels the costs of an additional alliance actually outweigh the benefits

growth aspirations and cultural support for entrepreneurship a comparison of post socialist countries based on gem data this paper explores whether significantly different growth aspirations of early stage entrepreneurs in slovenia compared to those in hungary and croatia are also accompanied by significantly different opportunity recognition cultural support for entrepreneurship and self efficacy our results suggest that a higher degree of alertness to unexploited perceived opportunities and cultural support for entrepreneurial motivation may be the cause of higher growth aspirations of slovenian early stage entrepreneurs while self efficacy with regard to entrepreneurial skills knowledge and experience was not found to be crucial

the effects of profit sharing on employment wages stock returns and productivity evidence from uk micro data this paper provides evidence based on u k firm level data that 1 the authors cannot reject the view that profit sharing firms view the total level of remuneration as the marginal cost of labor which is contrary to much of weitzman s analysis 2 there is some support for the popular view that profit sharing raises total remuneration and can therefore be inflationary and 3 the introduction of profit sharing does lead to higher productivity but this combined with the employment reducing consequences of 2 leads the authors to conclude that the net employment effect is small and uncertain copyright 1990 by royal economic society

nash equilibrium and welfare optimality if is a set of social alternatives a social choice rule scr assigns a subset of a to each potential profile of individuals preferences over a where the subset is interpreted as the set of welfare optima a game form or mechanism implements the social choice rule if for any potential profile of preferences 1 any welfare optimum can arise as a nash equilibrium of the game form implying in particular that a nash equilibrium exists and 2 all nash equilibria are welfare optimal the main result of this paper establishes that any scr that satisfies two properties monotonicity and no veto power can be implemented by a game form if there are three or more individuals the proof is constructive