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

does energy poverty really exist in china from the perspective of residential electricity consumption abstract china is undergoing a market oriented reform in energy and the residential sector will be involved in the near future the analysis of energy poverty is crucial in breaking the illusion of the dilemma between enhancing energy efficiency and controlling poverty based on chinese residential energy consumption survey we firstly estimated the energy poverty in china by the 10 indicator and lihc indicators and then proposed a minimum end use method to classify the energy poor households into lifeline and consumption energy poverty results show that energy poverty exists in china at the proportion of 18 9 and 46 of the energy poor houses are in short of modern energy consumption and are sensitive to tariffs with a level of electricity consumption lower than the basic demand the energy poverty rate is highest in central china while the lifeline energy poor are relatively concentrated in the western region in terms of public policy we suggest focusing on heterogeneity by considering different groups of households when implementing energy efficiency measures and targeting more on the consumption energy poor in poverty alleviation we also suggest paying particular attention to targeting households with low income by supporting practices such as coupons for energy consumption and appliance purchasing

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

entrepreneurial success and failure confidence and fallible judgment excess entry or the high failure rate of market entry decisions is often attributed to overconfidence exhibited by entrepreneurs assuming that these decisions depend on assessments of business opportunities we model boundedly rational entrepreneurs and show analytically that whereas excess entry is an inevitable consequence of imperfect judgment it does not necessarily imply overconfidence indeed judgmental fallibility can lead to excess entry even when all potential entrepreneurs are underconfident we further demonstrate that as a group individuals who decide to start a new business exhibit more confidence than those who do not and that successful entrants are less confident than failures our results therefore question general claims that overconfidence leads to excess entry we conclude by emphasizing the need to understand the role of judgmental fallibility in producing economic outcomes and implications for both venture capitalists and the training of entrepreneurs

towards a sustainable electrification in ghana a review of renewable energy deployment policies abstract ghana has been facing perennial power rationing over the years due to fuel supply challenges the country s energy system is likely to suffer additional strain from rising energy demand fueled by population growth rapid urbanization and economic development fortunately there are enormous renewable energy resources which can provide sustainable electrification as backbone to socioeconomic development while curbing global warming ghana s energy strategy targets 100 access to electricity and 10 share of sustainable power in national generation mix by 2020 despite the existence of numerous policies and a renewable energy act current contribution of non conventional renewable energy to electricity generation is less than 1 the right mix of policies to address the unique domestic conditions and achieve its specific development goals remains insufficient this study reviews the regulatory framework financing incentives and other provisions of ghana s renewable energy act it critically examines the policy s strengths weaknesses opportunities and treats based on comparative analysis and lessons drawn from failed and successful implementation of similar policies around the world the study also assesses the impact of policy on project development it was found that the performance of ghana s renewable energy policy on grid connected electricity has been poor compared to its target the fundamental reasons for this unsatisfactory performance may be attributed to partial implementation of policies lack of market driven support schemes lack of pricing policy framework weak grid network limited access to funds and inconsistencies in renewable energy development strategies this study proposes the following countermeasures i ghana should comprehensively harmonize renewable energy regulatory and fiscal policies with domestic electricity pricing regime ii market driven support schemes should be prioritized for cost effectiveness and minimum governmental influence these reforms can help eliminate some of the major barriers to sustainable electrification in ghana while the lessons provide a learning curve for other african countries

a review of trends policies and plans for increasing energy access in ghana abstract the need to secure future energy in the forms of electricity and modern cooking fuels is recognized as critical to achieving the millennium development goals particularly poverty reduction ensuring improved education health water supply and environmental sustainability this paper presents a review of the trends policies plans and programmes for increasing energy access in ghana with primary focus on electricity cooking fuels and renewable energy the paper argues that even though governments over the years have had the provision of energy services high on the national development agenda past and existing policies and plans have not delivered effective results to accelerate energy access especially in the rural and peri urban areas where the services are badly needed the paper therefore calls for a coherent national energy policy with inputs from a wider section of the public that has precise targets and clearly laid down strategies including financing mechanisms to achieve the targets

energy poverty in china an index based comprehensive evaluation abstract energy poverty has got increasing attention during the latest three decades measuring energy poverty is the premise of policy making to alleviate energy poverty there is no unified energy poverty measurement that has been widely accepted this paper reviews the commonly used energy poverty measurements through classifying them into three categories energy service availability energy service quality and satisfaction of energy demand for human s survival and development this paper also analyzes the suitability of the commonly used energy poverty measurement for china from the prospective of data availability and index applicability furthermore we construct a new energy poverty comprehensive evaluation index in this study and the index is illustrated to evaluate regional energy poverty in china the evaluation results indicate that china s energy poverty showed an alleviating trend from 2000 to 2011 and during this period china s energy service availability improved slightly energy consumption cleanliness showed no significant change energy management completeness decreased with fluctuations and household energy affordability and energy efficiency improved continually in addition china s regions show different characteristics of energy poverty for example middle reaches of yangtze river region showed the worst energy availability and eastern coastal region showed the worst energy management completeness several policy implications for energy poverty alleviation are also proposed in this study including for instance increasing investment on energy infrastructure and spreading energy management organization in rural area decreasing relative cost on household commercial energy consumption and encourage the utilization of modern clean and efficient household energy consumption equipment

counting and multidimensional poverty measurement this paper proposes a new methodology for multidimensional poverty measurement consisting of an identification method k that extends the traditional intersection and union approaches and a class of poverty measures m our identification step employs two forms of cutoff one within each dimension to determine whether a person is deprived in that dimension and a second across dimensions that identifies the poor by counting the dimensions in which a person is deprived the aggregation step employs the fgt measures appropriately adjusted to account for multidimensionality the axioms are presented as joint restrictions on identification and the measures and the methodology satisfies a range of desirable properties including decomposability the identification method is particularly well suited for use with ordinal data as is the first of our measures the adjusted headcount ratio we present some dominance results and an interpretation of the adjusted headcount ratio as a measure of unfreedom examples from the us and indonesia illustrate our methodology

assessing venture capital investments with noncompensatory behavioral decision models abstract this article examines the prospect of a decision support system for the assessment of venture capital investments it approaches the task of developing decision models from the perspective of the venture capitalist thus venture capitalists have played an active role in defining the predictor variables and in providing data on their own investments venture capitalists and recent research underscore the importance of the entrepreneur in new ventures and the predictor variables selected reflect this bias the literature is now replete with studies demonstrating the superiority of multiattribute actuarial models over human judgment for diverse decision environments ranging from medical science to finance this class of behavioral decision models consists of the simultaneous consideration of several attributes relevant to a decision actuarial models of this kind can be applied to attribute and decision data based on the decision maker s judgments i e expected outcomes before the events transpire termed judgment based models they can also be applied to data on past events or actual outcomes where known termed environment based models again it needs to be emphasized that actuarial models whether based on the decision maker s judgments or on the environment usually outperform the decision maker these general principles are applied here among actuarial models a particular subclass of models is called noncompensatory in these models a low value for one attribute cannot be compensated by a high value for another attribute as an example in selecting a place kicker in football athletic skills other than kicking ability are irrelevant in this study two types of noncompensatory actuarial models conjunctive and disjunctive are used to model both venture capitalists judgments and the environment interviews with venture capitalists reveal that some place strong emphasis on one or two attributes in judging a potential investment this type of decision making behavior indicates a disjunctive decision process at the same time there can be a tendency to ensure that a prospective investment is satisfactory at a minimum the entrepreneur s tenacity courage is a redundant variable that is sublimated in desire for success and enthusiasm capacity for work

high growth entrepreneurial firms in africa a quantile regression approach this article analyses the growth performance of a large set of entrepreneurial firms in ten manufacturing sectors of 11 sub saharan african countries the focus of the article is on identifying those entrepreneurs attributes and firm characteristics that tend to generate a significant number of high growth firms in these countries to this end we use a quantile regression which provides a more complete estimation of the growth distribution of firms conditional on different attributes the results indicate that firms that engage in product innovation have their own transport means and are connected to the internet through their own website are especially characterized by higher growth rates and also display a distribution of growth rates skewed to the right hosting a higher number of high growth firms the effect of the last two variables which relate to distance bridging modes of infrastructure points to the self reinforcing growth effects they generate in creating wider input and output markets education raises growth opportunities by affecting the lower quantiles but it does not appear to influence the upper quantiles the estimated conditional growth distributions for the technology intensive machinery and electronics sectors show more extreme tails and a lower mean in comparison to the traditional industries indicating the more risky nature of doing business in these industries

demand for cooking fuels in a developing country to what extent do taste and preferences matter overreliance on biomass energy such as firewood and charcoal for cooking in developing countries has contributed to high rates of deforestation and resulted in substantial indoor pollution which has negatively impacted the health of many individuals however the effectiveness of public policies aimed at encouraging households to switch to cleaner fuels such as liquefied petroleum gas lpg and kerosene hinges on the extent to which they are mentally committed to specific fuels using data on four cooking fuels charcoal firewood lpg and kerosene from the ghana living standards survey we found strong evidence that the most preferred fuel is lpg followed by charcoal with kerosene the least preferred in addition with the exception of kerosene that has price elastic demand the price elasticities of demand for the fuel types examined are inelastic this finding suggests the so called fuel ladder is not robust

assessing the extent and intensity of energy poverty using multidimensional energy poverty index empirical evidence from households in india abstract in this paper we have made a comprehensive assessment of the extent and various socio economic implications of energy poverty in india amartya sens s capability approach to development underpins the analysis of household level data taken from the india human development survey ii ihds ii 2011 12 using the multidimensional energy poverty index mepi the overall results show that energy poverty is widespread in india and the existence of energy poverty also coincides with the other forms of deprivations such as income poverty and social backwardness for example dalits lower caste and adivasis tribal are found to be extremely energy poor compared to the other social groups in india the results also reveal that it is the responsibility of women to manage the domestic chores such as collection of firewood and making of dung cake in traditional indian households inefficient use of such biomass fuels is found to cause health hazards

energy poverty an overview abstract in the coming decades the energy sector will have to face three major transformations concerned with climate change security of supply and energy poverty the first two have been extensively analysed but less attention has been paid to the third even though it has a great influence on the lives of millions of people this paper presents an overview on energy poverty different ways of measuring it and its implications according to the who indoor pollution causes an estimated 1 3 million deaths per annum in low income countries associated with the use of biomass in inadequate cookstoves although energy poverty cannot be delinked from the broader more complex problem of poverty in general access to energy infrastructures would avoid its most serious consequences and would help to encourage autonomous development according to the iea the cost of providing universal access to energy by 2030 would require annual investment of 35 billion i e much less than the amount provided annually in subsidies to fossil fuels finally the paper argues that energy and energy poverty need to be incorporated into the design of development strategies

entrepreneurial risk have we been asking the wrong question entrepreneurs are often thought to engage in risky behaviors thus they may be seen as more willing than average to take risks we offer a dissenting view central to entrepreneurship is the alertness perspective which suggests that entrepreneurs may assess opportunities and threats differently than non entrepreneurs that differential assessment may be understood in terms of bayesian probability the bayesian model argues that differing assessments of prospective outcomes may be attributable to differences in prior information this perspective on risk assessment has implications for entrepreneurial decision making whether to launch a new venture or adopt a growth strategy the literature is reviewed a synthesis is offered a numerical example is developed and a research agenda is proposed

energy poor or fuel poor what are the differences abstract energy poverty and fuel poverty are descriptors of problems of households energy consumption they are both distinct problems and have been addressed by many researchers organizations and governments cross use of the terms of energy poverty and fuel poverty in published papers is common as an accurate descriptor is the presupposition of research and policy development especially for those who just started to pay attention to this issue this paper compares the definitions research priorities status quo and problems of these two concepts and summarizes the relationship between them the paper suggests that only when the research targets are households who are living in a cold climate and have difficulty in getting access to electricity or modern cooking facilities and in supplying indoor heating with appropriate cost the concepts of energy poverty and fuel poverty have the chance to be broadened and mutually integrated

an empirical analysis of household energy choice in ghana abstract using data from two recently available living standards surveys we trace the dynamics in cooking fuel choice among ghanaian households over the period 2005 6 and 2012 13 and further investigate the main forces driving households choice of a cooking fuel evidence from this paper reveals a significant transition from fuelwood use towards lpg over the period results further reveal factors such as price reliability in supply of lpg income and other household attributes as significant factors influencing households choice of a given energy type for cooking relevant policy prescriptions are offered to engender sustainable energy use and reduce over reliance on the already depleted forest resources for biomass energy

energy affordability and the benefits system in italy abstract in this paper we discuss a number of ways to define and measure the affordability of energy consumption and we examine the emergence of energy poverty in italy in the period from 1998 to 2011 the paper examines the eligibility criteria for claiming the benefits available to support energy consumption for vulnerable families and it identifies the potential beneficiaries the study assesses the appropriateness of the eligibility criteria by comparing the population targeted by the policy with the population actually facing affordability problems a simulation exercise using the hypothetical scenario most likely to result in energy benefits being made available shows that regardless of the affordability index adopted the provision of state energy benefits has little impact on fuel poverty

overconfidence and excess entry an experimental approach psychological studies show that most people are overconfident about their own relative abilities and unreasonably optimistic about their futures e g shelly e taylor and j d brown 1988 neil d weinstein 1980 when assessing their position in a distribution of peers on almost any positive trait like driving ability ola svenson 1981 income prospects or longevity a vast majority of people say they are above the average although of course only half can be if the trait is symmetrically distributed this paper explores whether optimistic biases could plausibly and predictably influence economic behavior in one particular setting entry into competitive games or markets many empirical studies show that most new businesses fail within a few years for example using plant level data from the u s census of manufacturers spanning 1963 1982 timothy dunne et al 1988 estimated that 61 5 percent of all entrants exited within five years and 79 6 percent exited within 10 years most of these exits are failures see also dunne et al 1989a 1989b d shapiro and r s khemani 1987

who adopts lpg as the main cooking fuel and why empirical evidence on ghana based on national survey the aim of this paper is to identify the factors that influence the probability of adopting lpg as the main cooking fuel in ghana using household level data gleaned from last two nationwide household surveys glss 5 glss 6 using a flexible semi parametric specification the following were uncovered first we find socioeconomic and demographic factors such as income education access to urban infrastructure and location of household as key drivers of households choice of lpg as main cooking energy source again the influences of these factors are stable across time and with a strong price effect the evidence shows that urban households with better socioeconomic and demographic factors are likely to adopt lpg as the main cooking fuel relative to households in rural areas and also urban households with poor socioeconomic and demographic factors finally we observe that the imposition of fully parametric structure functional form prior to estimation on factors such as age of household head income and household size as done in the literature is inappropriate at least in the case of ghana and tend to bias the marginal effects there is strong evidence of variations in the response rate of lpg adoption over the domains of income household size and the age of the household head the results suggest a policy dichotomy between rural and urban dwellers for it to be effective

more than you think an inclusive estimate of business entries abstract the wells fargo nfib series on business entries and exits collected data throughout 1995 from 36 000 households regarding the business formation activity occurring among adults within those households after adjusting for the 1 37 owners per firm and the 10 of households with more than one entry there were an estimated 4 553 million business entries in the 12 month period involving 6 211 million active owners seventy eight and one half 78 5 percent of those businesses were de novo starts 20 0 purchases and the remainder other forms of entry including missing responses most of the entries were quite small whether started or purchased the number of business entries is significantly larger than prior estimates however the 4 553 million figure when dissected into component parts is consistent with other measures of business entry the primary reason for the larger estimate is that this research was able to capture the significant number of very small entries that either do not appear in other databases or appear only after a substantial delay these new data offer a significantly expanded view of the american business population and its dynamics more specifically they provide quantification of the smaller end of the entry scale thereby introducing new population distributions and raising fundamental research and marketing questions about the unit of analysis what is a business what constitutes a reasonable survey sample to what population do we generalize survey data what are the market segments of the small business population and how do they differ what are the public policy requirements of these segments and how do they coincide and conflict and what do real entry numbers tell us about the operation of the american economy on both a secular and cyclical basis the foregoing are obvious however there are more subtle and perhaps more interesting questions for example the more people try to go into business for themselves the more our collective american experience is influenced by the experience of business ownership small business draws enormous empathy from the american public few americans institutions are as popular this is obviously a complex phenomenon however one explanation for its popularity is that so many americans are exposed to business ownership either personally or through someone they know part of this research not yet published shows that small business ownership pervades every class income category racial grouping etc the penetration of business formation into the american experience therefore is not only deep it is also broad and when its dimensions are so great the remaining issue is not the existence of influence but its degree if there are more starts than previously recognized there must also be more exits and if there are more exits the dynamics of the business entry exit process become even more tumultuous than previously recognized particularly for those interested in either policy or management the question becomes why is exit so common one path of inquiry leads to motivation for entry including career alternatives and income supplementation to what extent do people intend to grow their businesses and to what extent do they intend their businesses to fill financial occupational or time gaps until something better comes along another path of inquiry leads to resources do resource constraints or constraints of other natures impede business development then there is the issue of preparation how well prepared are entrants and what reasonable steps can be taken to improve their assessments of potential opportunities or to effectively implement plans to capitalize on them these are not necessarily new issues but they become more conspicuous and pressing when the large number of exits is appreciated the technique used to capture these data at a reasonable cost is called an omnibus or caravan survey this survey technique is not well known outside the commercial survey industry but it presents considerable opportunity for researchers either with limited budgets or desirous of asking fewer than 10 15 minutes worth of questions from a sample of the adult population its advantage is financial multiple sponsors can ask a limited number of proprietary questions at their own expense but they then share the costs and results of reaching respondents and of asking the demographic questions for example age or sex of respondent the current research posed two screen questions to all 36 000 households interviewed the sponsors paid for those 72 000 questions but only about 2 000 respondents passed one of the screens these respondents were led through several more questions thus the sponsors paid just for the screen questions and those questions administered to the 2 000 an extensive set of demographic data about the respondents was thrown in free

measuring energy poverty focusing on what matters abstract the provision of modern energy services is recognised as a critical foundation for sustainable development and is central to the everyday lives of people effective policies to dramatically expand modern energy access need to be grounded in a robust information base metrics that can be used for comparative purposes and to track progress towards targets therefore represent an essential support tool this paper reviews the relevant literature and discusses the adequacy and applicability of existing instruments to measure energy poverty drawing on those insights it proposes a new composite index to measure energy poverty both the associated methodology and initial results for several african countries are discussed whereas most existing indicators and composite indices focus on assessing the access to energy or the degree of development related to energy our new index the multidimensional energy poverty index mepi focuses on the deprivation of access to modern energy services it captures both the incidence and intensity of energy poverty and provides a new tool to support policy making

energy poverty in ghana any progress so far abstract this paper investigates the dynamics of energy poverty in ghana using two nationwide cross sectional datasets ghana living standards surveys round 5 and round 6 employing the multidimensional energy poverty index mepi as a measure of energy poverty this paper estimates that the share of energy poor people decreased from 88 4 in 2005 2006 to 82 5 in 2012 2013 the results indicate that although there has been a significant decline in the overall energy poverty in ghana during the study periods the incidence of energy poverty remains high moreover the study findings show a large gap between urban and rural energy poverty over the two periods rural people are almost twice as energy poor as urban people these findings suggest the need for the incorporation of energy poverty reduction strategies into income poverty reduction strategies to help improve not only access to modern energy but also in terms of affordability