using employer hiring behavior to test the educational signaling hypothesis this paper presents a test of the educational signaling hypothesis if employers use education as a signal in the hiring process they will rely more on education when less is otherwise known about applicants we nd that employers are more likely to lower educational standards when an informal more informative recruitment channel is used so we conclude that education is used as a signal in the hiring process

are church and state substitutes evidence from the 1996 welfare reform abstract churches provide community services similar to those provided by the government but there has been no convincing analysis of the extent to which church activity can substitute for government activity to address this important issue this paper uses a new panel data set of presbyterian church usa congregations to regress both church member donations and a church s community spending on a number of variables including government welfare expenditures a provision of the 1996 welfare law that decreased the availability and use of welfare services by non citizens serves as an instrument to identify the causal effect of government spending on church activity the results show that church activities substitute for government activities extrapolating the findings to all denominations the estimated crowd out effect lies between 20 and 38 cents on the dollar the results are subjected to a number of robustness tests

sacrifice and stigma reducing free riding in cults communes and other collectives this paper presents an economic analysis of religious behavior that accounts for the continuing success of groups with strange requirements and seemingly inefficient prohibitions the analysis does not presuppose any special motives for religious activity rather religion is modeled as a club good that displays positive returns to participatory crowding the analysis demonstrates that efficient religions with perfectly rational members may benefit from stigma self sacrifice and bizarre behavioral restrictions the model also addresses sacrifice in nonreligious social clubs fraternities communes political parties work groups and families

performance factors of small tourism ventures the interface of tourism entrepreneurship and the environment abstract performance factors of small israeli tourism ventures were examined using an integrated model that combines four theoretical approaches each focusing on a different central facet environmental milieu institutional support entrepreneurial human capital and the venture s bundle of services the current research developed an operational instrument for assessing environmental attractiveness components of tourism ventures and their relationship to performance a factor analysis based on this instrument revealed three environmental factors tourist related infrastructure options for excursions and scenery including climate an attractive environment contributed to higher revenues in tourism ventures however it did not assure profitability the results indicate the dual nature of the impact of institutional support upon the tourism venture s performance regardless of the size and age of ventures those obtaining the advisory type of assistance from the governmental tourism incubator performed less well than those ventures that did not obtain such support by contrast those tourism ventures that were financially supported by external sources performed better than those that were not financially supported the explanation for this curious and seemingly contradictory finding may lie in the different criteria for receiving financial and advisory assistance success in persuading external sources to provide financial support would seem to be evidence of the soundness of the venture s planning and its economic viability by contrast insofar as virtually any venture in the area may apply for and obtain advisory assistance from the governmental tourism incubator with no requirement to meet financial criteria of any kind it could be that precisely the weaker ventures are being carried along by this form of assistance among the various entrepreneur s attributes examined managerial skills provided the strongest association with the performance measures the managerial skills were also found to be the most significant variable explaining performance relatively to the variables derived from the other three approaches these results have implications regarding the nature of the support to be given by a governmental tourism incubator to entrepreneurs operating in the region given that lack of managerial skills is one of the main barriers to a venture s success particularly in small businesses where the owners have to be involved in all areas of activity the incubator needs to provide entrepreneurs with tailored regional business and management training tools to promote tourism venture development and success the study also reveals that the number of services offered by a tourism venture made only a minor contribution in the revenues regression which may indicate that providing a bundle of services for the tourist customer does not necessarily guarantee profitability a noteworthy finding is the similarity in the differential association between the number of services offered and the performance measures on the one hand and attractiveness features with performance on the other in both cases these factors positively contribute to the revenues regression but neither contributes to the profitability or income regression this means that an attractive environment does contribute to higher revenues in that more tourists choose to visit the tourist attractions however this does not assure profitability similarly providing many services to the visitors may also contribute to higher revenues but does not necessarily assure profitable business outcomes the current findings indicate that small tourism venture profitability is contingent on human capital especially the skills of the entrepreneurs running the venture in accordance with our findings that managerial skills are so crucial for venture success the main objective of advisory incubators should be to promote managerial competencies

the effect of education on religion evidence from compulsory schooling laws abstract for over a century social scientists have debated how educational attainment impacts religious belief in this paper i use canadian compulsory schooling laws to identify the relationship between completed schooling and later religiosity i find that higher levels of education lead to lower levels of religious affiliation later in life an additional year of education leads to a 4 percentage point decline in the likelihood that an individual identifies with any religious tradition this is a reasonably large effect extrapolating the results to the broader population would suggest that increases in schooling could explain most of the large rise in non affiliation in canada in recent decades

the founder s self assessed competence and venture performance abstract a large body of recent research seeks to understand organizational founding and the performance of emerging businesses although much of this research has focused on the characteristics of the business founder there is only mixed support for relationships between founders characteristics and venture performance begley and boyd 1987 gartner 1988 low and macmillan 1988 sexton and bowman 1984 this study is based on research that identifies the entrepreneurial managerial and technical functional functions as three roles that founders must competently enact in order to be successful hofer and sandberg 1987 mintzberg and waters 1982 pavett and lau 1983 schein 1987 effective performance in the entrepreneurial role requires the founder to have the ability to recognize business opportunities and the drive to see firm creation through to fruition hofer and sandberg 1987 timmons et al 1987 effective execution of the managerial role requires conceptual interpersonal and political competence pavett and lau 1983 to be competent in the technical functional role founders must be able to use the tools or procedures required in their specialized field pavett and lau 1983 to measure the competencies necessary for effectiveness in the entrepreneurial managerial and technical functional roles we developed a questionnaire to allow founders to provide self evaluations of their competencies the results provide strong evidence for the reliability of measurement and the validity of the constructs the relationships revealed in this study suggest some preliminary recommendations for potential entrepreneurs career counselors and educators the number of businesses previously initiated and the years spent as an owner manager do not appear to be strongly related to the performance of the venture however the most successful entrepreneurs are strongly convinced of their ability to recognize business opportunity they believe that they have the drive to see the venture through to fruition and report that they subjugate outside interests to the demands of their businesses thus although self assessed proficiency in the entrepreneurial function does not appear to be contingent on the length of previous experience as a founder it does appear to be a necessary component in the development of high performance companies founders of the most successful firms also gave themselves high ratings on the abilities associated with effective performance in the managerial role they had high self evaluation scores on the items measuring organizational and interpersonal skills competence in the managerial role appears to be enhanced by business education and the years of general managerial experience the founders of highly successful firms also evaluated their technical skills highly they believed they were experts in their fields and could use the specialized tools and procedures to produce high quality products and services thus the results indicate that the most successful founders those whose firms show higher levels of growth and earnings rate themselves as competent in the entrepreneurial managerial and technical functional roles they see themselves as competent generalists and in a result that is most gratifying for those in higher education it appears that a business education and experience in general managerial positions lays the ground work for a successful entrepreneurial career

faith based charity and crowd out during the great depression abstract interest in religious organizations as providers of social services has increased dramatically in recent years churches in the u s were a crucial provider of social services through the early part of the twentieth century but their role shrank dramatically with the expansion in government spending under the new deal in this paper we investigate the extent to which the new deal crowded out church charitable spending in the 1930s we do so using a new nationwide data set of charitable spending for six large christian denominations matched to data on local new deal spending we instrument for new deal spending using measures of the political strength of a state s congressional delegation and confirm our findings using a different instrument based on institutional constraints on state relief spending with both instruments we find that higher government spending leads to lower church charitable activity crowd out was small as a share of total new deal spending 3 but large as a share of church spending our estimates suggest that benevolent church spending fell by 30 in response to the new deal and that government relief spending can explain virtually all of the decline in charitable church activity observed between 1933 and 1939

who gets the job referral evidence from a social networks experiment we use recruitment into a laboratory experiment in kolkata india to analyze how job networks select individuals for employment opportunities we present evidence that individuals face a tradeoff between choosing the most qualified individual for the job and the individual who is ideal from the perspective of their social network the experiment allows randomly selected subjects to refer members of their social networks to subsequent rounds of the experiment and varies the incentive schemes offered to these participants we find that when faced with performance pay individuals are more likely to refer co workers and less likely to refer family members high ability participants who are offered performance pay recruit referrals who perform significantly better on a cognitive ability task and also prove to be more reliable as evidenced by their choices in the trust game and performance on an effort task

businesses without glamour an analysis of resources on performance by size and age in small service and retail firms abstract research on factors influencing performance in new and small companies is extensive earlier work found that strategies e g cost quality differentiation etc affected performance contingent on industry conditions the environment and the entrepreneur s background although this work provides a solid basis for understanding differences in entrepreneurial performance some firms are limited in their choices of strategy due to size age or industry often these firms are in industries where entry barriers are low and competitive advantages are easily imitated small service and retail businesses operate in sectors where these conditions are apparent comprising more than 50 of all small firms they require minimal start up investments but face intense competition lacking the glamour of high innovation high growth firms service and retail companies are at the end of the value chain their fortunes rising and falling as a result of the direct influence of the owner founder hence performance variation may be better explained by the capabilities of the firm or individual competencies of the owner founder that is the resource base and resource combinations rather than strategy the strategic importance of an organization s resources and capabilities is the foundation of resource based theory resources are tangible and intangible assets tied to the firm in a relatively permanent fashion their combinations are heterogeneous and form the basis for product market strategies studies of resources strategies and performance are emerging in the entrepreneurial area research shows that various resources in concert with different strategy types can lead to above average performance over the business life cycle and that combinations of resources are related to survival yet the vast majority of work focuses on high growth high tech or manufacturing businesses less is known about the relationships of resources to performance in less glamorous sectors in these small service and retail businesses we speculate that resources in particular human and organizational resources may play a greater role in explaining performance than strategy further as other authors have suggested it is expected that the combinations of these resources will vary across age and size this study examines the influence of human and organizational resources on performance in a sample of 195 service and retail firms operating in central new jersey using a structured questionnaire all companies utilized a focus strategy either focused cost or focused differentiation and employed a minimum of 3 to a maximum of 100 employees all measures had theoretical and or empirical precedent and were tested statistically for reliability we used factor analysis to reduce the independent variables to two human resource variables owner resources and commitment one organizational resource variable comprised of planning systems and staff skills and one strategy variable focused cost and focused differentiation control variables were business age business size environmental benignness and industry growth the dependent variable performance was measured in two ways net cash flow and log of growth in employees over 3 years the study first examined whether strategy or resources had a greater influence on performance results showed that strategy influenced performance less than human and organizational resources both individually and interactively the influence of owner resources background and attitudes on net cash flow was stronger than on growth where the only significant variable was industry market growth to analyze effects of resources on performance by size we divided the sample by size groupings selecting the smallest maximum five employees and largest quartiles minimum 16 employees which were comprised of 55 and 50 companies respectively these analyses showed that owner resources commitment and organizational resources contributed positively to net cash flow in very small firms however interactive effects of these resource combinations were negative for instance owner resources and organizational resources together and organizational resources and commitment together resulted in less positive cash flow than when analyzed separately this implies that different resource combinations can have negative influences in these very small firms we examined age effects in the same manner as size dividing the sample into age group quartiles and conducting an analysis only for very young fewer than 5 years and very old minimum 19 years groups which comprised 54 and 52 companies respectively these analyses showed that although growth was more rapid among the youngest firms there were no distinctive resource based correlates to growth in either age group substantive increases in formalized systems and procedures were not apparent among the oldest of these companies compared with the youngest contrary to previous work showing the evolution of these over business life cycles results of this study are applicable only in the context of service and retail firms and readers should note this sample was nonrandom and geographically concentrated our purpose was not to predict but describe associations between resources and performance this study shows that for firms in competitive industries at the end of the value chain type of strategy is less important than resource combinations for certain types of performance human and organizational resources are associated with more positive cash flow whereas industry and market factors are related to growth these results imply that firms seeking growth are best served by selecting and entering growth markets and industries on the other hand if strong positive cash flows are the primary objective attention to combinations of resources is more important for instance owner founders having a strong business and managerial background and industry experience will need less formalized systems whereas those owner founders with weaker managerial resources might benefit from more formalized procedures and skilled staff

unpacking the uncertainty construct implications for entrepreneurial action abstract uncertainty is central to entrepreneurship however robust and generalizable findings that explain the conditions in which uncertainty may impede or promote entrepreneurial action remain elusive we operationalize uncertainty as a multi dimensional construct composed of state effect and response types of uncertainty milliken 1987 to investigate the relationship between uncertainty and entrepreneurial action we decompose more than 2800 exploitation decision policies nested within a sample of new product decision makers working in entrepreneurial software firms we focus on the primary decision maker s willingness to exploit a given opportunity in the face of varying combinations and manifestations of uncertainty and find that the type of uncertainty experienced influences the willingness to engage in entrepreneurial action differently further we find that differences in how each type of uncertainty is manifested in the environment the scale of exploitation i e large vs small and the entrepreneur s expertise serve to moderate the relationship between uncertainty and action in counter intuitive ways we discuss the implications for both theory and practice

pride and prejudice using ethnic sounding names and inter ethnic marriages to identify labour market discrimination labour markets discriminate against workers with particular ethnic sounding names we use non random sorting into interethnic marriage and salient differences between sephardic and ashkenazi surnames to evaluate the causal impact of sephardic affiliation on wages using the 1995 israeli census we estimate the effect of a sephardic sounding surname on wages we first compare the wages of israeli jewish males born to sephardic fathers and ashkenazi mothers sa who are more likely to carry a sephardic surname with the wages of israeli jewish males born to ashkenazi fathers and sephardic mothers as we find that israeli labor markets discriminate based on perceived ethnicity sa workers earn significantly less than their as counterparts we then exploit the custom of women to adopt their husbands surnames to disentangle actual ethnicity from the ethnicity perceived by the market consistent with ethnic discrimination based on surnames we find that it is father in law s ethnicity rather than father s ethnicity that shapes female wage rates finally we find that labor markets discriminate based on surname only when those names provide additional information about ethnicity when ethnicity can be discerned from skin tone surnames do not provide additional explanatory power with respect to wages

is smoking inferior evidence from variation in the earned income tax credit in this paper we estimate the causal income elasticity of smoking participation cessation and cigarette demand conditional upon participation using an instrumental variables iv estimation strategy we find that smoking appears to be a normal good among low income adults higher instrumented income is associated with an increase in the number of cigarettes consumed and a decrease in smoking cessation the magnitude and direction of the changes in the income coefficients from our ols to iv estimates are consistent with the hypothesis that correlational estimates between income and smoking related outcomes are biased by unobservable characteristics that differentiate higher income smokers from lower income smokers

properties of emerging organizations empirical evidence from norway the process of new venture creation is of central importance to entrepreneurship the effects of initial organizing have a direct effect on survival yet empirical examination of the dimensions of emerging organizations is limited using longitudinal data on 203 nascent entrepreneurs from norway over the course of four years 1996 1999 this paper empirically tests four properties of emerging organizations intentionality resources boundary and exchange and their effect on the likelihood of continuing the organizing effort katz and gartner acad manage rev 13 3 429 441 1988 consistent with previous research our results suggest that organizations which engage in a greater number of organizing activities are more likely to continue the organizing effort in addition intentionality boundary and exchange are positively associated with organizational emergence whereas resources are a necessary but not sufficient condition for organizations to continue organizing the concentration of organizing activities is also positively associated with the likelihood of continuing the organizing effort

broadening the foreign market entry mode decision separating ownership and control this paper argues that the ownership and control dimensions of foreign market entry mode choice should be separated and that foreign market entry mode decisions should be expanded to business activities beyond production and distribution empirical results from the global hotel industry indicate that the transferability of the entrant s competitive advantages the local market s absorptive capacity and the availability of trustworthy local partners differentially affect the ownership and control dimensions of the entry mode decision

club goods and group identity evidence from islamic resurgence during the indonesian financial crisis this paper tests a model in which group identity in the form of religious intensity functions as ex post insurance i exploit relative price shocks induced by the indonesian financial crisis to demonstrate a causal relationship between economic distress and religious intensity koran study and islamic school attendance that is weaker for other forms of group identity consistent with ex post insurance credit availability reduces the effect of economic distress on religious intensity religious intensity alleviates credit constraints and religious institutions smooth consumption shocks across households and within households particularly for those who were less religious before the crisis

migration remittances and capital accumulation evidence from rural mexico this paper studies the link between migration remittances and productive assets accumulation for a panel of poor rural households in mexico over the period 19972006 in a context of nancial markets imperfections migration may act as a substitute for imperfect credit and insurance provision through remittances from migrants and thus exert a positive eect on investment however it may well be the case that remittances are channelled towards increasing consumption and leisure goods exploiting within family variation and an instrumental variable strategy we show that migration indeed accelerates productive assets accumulation moreover when we look at the eect of migration on consumption of non productive assets durable goods we nd instead a negative eect our results then suggest that

market attractiveness resource based capabilities venture strategies and venture performance abstract this research seeks to identify variables that should be related to venture performance it is hypothesized that both market attractiveness and resource based capabilities are directly related to new venture performance in addition specific resource based capabilities are hypothesized to be directly related to the competitive strategies chosen by a firm finally the fit between strategies and resource based capabilities is hypothesized to be related to venture performance the sample consisted of all manufacturing businesses sic codes 20 39 started or reorganized in the corporate form between 1980 and 1991 in nine counties in northwestern pennsylvania as identified by a major marketing research service of the 800 companies surveyed completed questionnaires were returned for 155 representing a 19 response rate the 155 responding companies had a median age of 5 years with a median of 15 employees the major products of companies in the sample included flour lumber household and office furniture plastic containers tools and dies ready mixed concrete pipe fittings measuring devices paint and varnish machine tools electroplate carbon and graphite composite products plastic laminated products circuit boards electronic components and parts for internal combustion engines in general the results confirm the validity of the measures of environmental and organizational characteristics as we have adapted them for new ventures as hypothesized perceived market attractiveness and the overall abundance of resource based capabilities were significantly related to venture performance also in two of three cases the evidence suggests that specific resource based capabilities are related to the firm s stated competitive strategies finally although the relationship between fit and performance is not supported in all cases the performance of the emerging manufacturing ventures included in this sample appears to be enhanced when resource based capabilities are supportive of a cost leadership strategy and when firms seeking to differentiate based on product and service quality have the resource based capabilities to support that strategy the results of this emerging research stream will make an important contribution to our understanding of the factors that impact firm performance for scholars the results provide additional information needed to develop comprehensive new venture performance models a clear understanding of the factors that have a strong influence on venture performance will enable practitioners to better identify viable business opportunities and academicians to provide potential business founders with tools to help them recognize opportunity in addition the identification of appropriate levels of abstraction will provide building blocks for future research that seeks to integrate environmental and firm level constructs

pay or pray the impact of charitable subsidies on religious attendance abstract the economic argument for subsidizing charitable giving relies on the positive externalities of charitable activities particularly from the religious institutions that are the largest recipients of giving but the net external effects of subsidies to religious giving will also depend on a potentially important indirect effect as well impacts on religious participation religious participation can be either a complement to or a substitute with the level of charitable giving understanding these spillover effects of charitable giving may be quite important given the existing observational literature that suggests that religiosity is a major determinant of well being among americans in this paper i investigate the impact of charitable subsidies on a measure of religious participation attendance at religious services i do so by using data over three decades from the general social survey as well as confirming the impact of such subsidies on religious giving using the consumer expenditure survey i find strong evidence that religious giving and religious attendance are substitutes larger subsidies to charitable giving lead to more religious giving but less religious attendance with an implied elasticity of attendance with respect to religious giving of as much as 1 1 these results have important implications for the debate over charitable subsidies they also serve to validate economic models of religious participation

swinging a double edged sword the effect of slack on entrepreneurial management and growth resource slack represents a double edged sword simultaneously fueling and hindering growth drawing on penrose s growth theory and stevenson s entrepreneurial management theory we have developed and tested a conceptual model that provides a more nuanced account of the resource slack growth relationship using a large dataset spanning six years we have found that slack has a positive direct effect on growth but a negative effect on entrepreneurial management and that entrepreneurial management has a positive effect on growth our empirical and conceptual findings are important to the development of firm growth theory and explicate causal mechanisms transforming slack into firm level outcomes

principles of network development and evolution an experimental study this paper reports on an experimental investigation of the evolution of networks and the individual decision making processes that guide it inasmuch as there is no history of experimental work on network formation part of the paper is devoted to the formulation of problems that can be examined experimentally the results are that networks composed of decentralized decision makers are capable of overcoming complex coordination and learning problems and converge to stationary when it does not occur significant and persistent inefficiencies can result the models of equilibration based on the principle of nash equilibrium are more reliable than models based on the alternative principles of efficiency seeking or focalness of the network configuration however individual decision making within networks is not in accordance with the simple decision rules of nash best response instead we observed complicated strategies that appear to trade short term profits in order to signal to and teach other agents the strategies required for long term profit maximization

the church versus the mall what happens when religion faces increased secular competition recently economists have begun to consider the causes and consequences of religious participation an unanswered question in this literature is the effect upon individuals of changes in the opportunity cost of religious participation in this paper we identify a policy driven change in the opportunity cost of religious participation based on state laws that prohibit retail activity on sunday known as blue laws many states have repealed these laws in recent years raising the opportunity cost of religious participation we use a variety of data sets to show that when a state repeals its blue laws religious attendance falls and that church donations and spending fall as well these results do not seem to be driven by declines in religiosity prior to the law change nor do we see comparable declines in membership in or giving to nonreligious organizations after a state repeals its laws we then assess the effects of changes in these laws on drinking and drug use behavior in the nlsy we find that repealing blue laws leads to an increase in drinking and drug use and that this increase is found only among the initially religious individuals who were affected by the blue laws the effect is economically significant for example the gap in heavy drinking between religious and nonreligious individuals falls by about half after the laws are repealed

fertility and the personal exemption comment one of the most commonly cited studies on the effect of child subsidies on fertility whittington alm and peters 1990 claimed a large positive effect of child tax benefits on fertility using time series methods we revisit this question in light of recent increases in child tax benefits by replicating this earlier study and extending the analysis we do not find strong evidence to justify the model specification from the original paper moreover even if the original specification is appropriate we show that the results are not robust to more general measures of child tax benefits jel h24 j13

taxes and the labor market participation of married couples the earned income tax credit a distinguishing feature of recent changes to the us system of public assistance is its increasing focus on working families and reliance on the tax system to transfer dollars to needy families after a decade in near total obscurity the earned income tax credit eitc was expanded to become the largest cash transfer program for lower income families with children advocates of the eitc argue that unlike traditional welfare the credit helps promote both the values of family and work indeed empirical evidence consistent with economic theory suggests that the eitc promotes employment among eligible unmarried women with children to target benefits to lower income families however the eitc is based on family income leading to traditional welfare type disincentives for most eligible secondary earners in fact the eitc is likely to reduce overall family labor supply among married couples this paper examines the labor force participation response of married couples to eitc expansions between 1984 and 1996 the effect of the credit is estimated using both quasiexperimental and traditional reduced form labor supply models results from both models show the same qualitative conclusion that the eitc expansions reduced total family labor supply of married couples in all cases we find a decline in labor force participation by married women that more than offsets any rise in participation by their spouses while the labor force participation rate of married men increased by about 0 2 percentage points that of married women decreased by just over a full percentage point these aggregate effects mask substantial heterogeneity in the population women facing the strongest disincentives were more than 2 percentage points less likely to work after the expansions these findings imply that the eitc is effectively subsidizing married mothers to stay home and therefore have implications for the design of the program d 2003 elsevier b v all rights reserved

the effects of embeddedness on the entrepreneurial process abstract this paper uses giddens theory of structuration to develop the conception of entrepreneurship as an embedded socio economic process the qualitative examination of the actions of rural entrepreneurs finds that embeddedness plays a key role in shaping and sustaining business being embedded in the social structure creates opportunity and improves performance embedding enabled the entrepreneurs to use the specifics of the environment thus both recognition and realisation of opportunity are conditioned by the entrepreneurs role in the social structure

religion and economy religion has a two way interaction with political economy with religion viewed as a dependent variable a central question is how economic development and political institutions affect religious participation and beliefs with religion viewed as an independent variable a key issue is how religiosity affects individual characteristics such as work ethic honesty and thrift and thereby influences economic performance in this paper we sketch previous studies of this two way interaction but focus on our ongoing quantitative research with international data

the temporal nature of growth determinants in new bank foundings implications for new venture research design abstract several authors have suggested the founding period as a critical time in the development of a firm arguing that the resource and decision choices made at this point have a substantive impact on the firm s future yet historically most studies have measured new venture choices considerably after the founding period we suggest that the uniqueness of the founding event is important and test its validity through the examination of two implicit assertions these implicit assertions are those of temporal stability and temporal locus of growth determinants

technology strategy and new venture performance a study of corporate sponsored and independent biotechnology ventures abstract new ventures companies eight years or younger play a major role in the development of an emerging high technology industry corporate sponsored new ventures those supported by an established corporation and independent ventures those founded by independent entrepreneurs frequently battle for industry leadership and financial success whereas both venture types use technology to achieve financial and market success little is known about the differences in their technology strategies technology strategy is the plan that guides a new venture s decisions on the development and use of technological capabilities this strategy covers six major areas the first is selecting the pioneering posture where a venture decides whether or not be among the industry s first companies to introduce new products technologies to the market the second is determining the number of products to be introduced to the market the third is choosing the extent of a venture s use of internal and external r d sources internal sources usually refer to in house r d activities external sources may include purchasing or licensing of technology from other companies or joining strategic alliances to acquire that technology the fourth is deciding the level of r d spending the fifth is selecting the combination portfolio of applied and basic research projects whereas basic r d advances science applied r d leads to new products and technologies the sixth and final dimension is the venture s use of patenting to protect any competitive advantages it might gain from its r d activities this article reports the results of a study that explored the differences in the technology strategies and performance of corporate and independent ventures the biotechnology industry was chosen to test the study s hypotheses using 112 ventures seven of the study s hypotheses focused on the potential variations in technology strategy between corporate and independent ventures independent ventures ivs were expected to surpass corporate ventures cvs in pioneering new products technologies using internal r d and emphasizing applied r d cvs were expected to surpass ivs in introducing new products using external r d sources spending on r d and patenting the study s remaining three hypotheses covered possible variations in new venture performance nvp and their sources the results showed that ivs focused more on pioneering pursued a more applied r d portfolio and emphasized internal r d more than cvs cvs utilized external technology sources spent more heavily on r d stressed basic r d and used patenting more intensively than ivs these results were consistent with the hypotheses however contrary to expectations there were no significant differences between cvs and ivs in the frequency of new product introductions probably because most ventures were at the invention rather than the commercialization stage the results on the nvp of cvs and ivs were counter to expectations ivs outperformed cvs probably because of the high motivation of the iv owners who reaped the rewards of growth and profitability also whereas cvs may have greater access to the resources of their sponsors political conflicts and rigid corporate controls might have reduced their ability to achieve competitive advantages the results also indicated that cvs and ivs appeared to gain competitive advantages from different technological choices pioneering a focus on applied r d and extensive use of the internal r d sources were also positively associated with the performance of ivs heavy r d spending the use of both internal and external r d sources frequent product introductions and patenting were positively associated with the performance of cvs finding that technology strategies significantly impacted nvp should encourage executives to consider pursuing a formal technology strategy likewise the finding that different dimensions of technology strategy influenced the performance of cvs and ivs in different ways has practical implications cv managers can learn from their higher performing iv rivals also because established companies frequently acquire ivs information about their technology strategies can be valuable in assimilating the acquired ventures overall the results show that technology strategy is an important factor in enhancing new venture performance

identifying the causal effect of income on religiosity using the earned income tax credit abstract how do economic conditions income and the generosity of social insurance affect religious behavior this paper provides novel evidence for the united states using variation in earned income tax credit benefits across states over time and by number of children in the raw data income and religiosity have a trivial relationship in contrast the instrumental variables strategy shows that increases in income from the eitc are found to sizably reduce religious attendance among low income individuals among individuals who attend the results indicate that an additional 1000 in annual income is associated with a decrease of roughly 1 service per year as compared to an average of 16 services per year the effect arises mainly along the intensive margin decreasing devout behavior and increasing more marginal attendance but having little impact on whether an individual participates at all or on beliefs there are also minimal effects on the occurrence and amount of contributions to religious organizations the results extend our understanding of the determinants of religiosity the relationship between governmental income support and religious behavior and the social effects of the earned income tax credit

discrimination and job uncertainty abstract in this paper i incorporate group behaviour into a model of the labour market and show that discrimination can be the result of competition between coalitions of workers and bosses for jobs if the probability of correctly assessing the productivity of individual workers decreases coalition formation on the basis of recognisable characteristics becomes relatively more rewarding than coalition forming on the basis of productivity the conditions are under which each individual in the endogeneously defined group actively discriminates persons with different recognisable characteristics independent of productivity

endogenous job contact networks we use the uk quarterly labour force survey to document the presence of two phenomena first a positive correlation between unemployment rate and the proportion of job seekers who use social networks to nd jobs network use second a non monotone relation between unemployment rate and the proportion of recently employed workers who found their job through friends or relatives network productivity this second relation is positive for low levels of unemployment rate while it becomes negative for high levels of unemployment rate existing models of social networks and labor market generally assume that social networks are exogenous this assumption implies a negative correlation between unemployment rate and network productivity we develop a model where social networks are used to collect job oers but workers decide strategically how much to invest in their network we show that equilibrium job contact networks are dense and more productive in transmitting information when labor market turnover is moderate while they are less productive and segmented into clusters for either high or low turnover the equilibrium response of job contact networks to changes in labor market conditions is sucient to generate

conflict generating product price changes the imputed output approach abstract a novel approach to the generalisation of the conflict generating effects of product price changes on household incomes and utilities is developed it is based upon the concepts of household production of goods and complementarities in production between households economy outputs are imputed to households the imputed household outputs may be positive or negative households have an incentive to supply factors to firms if and only if at least one imputed output is negative it is shown that households which are complementary in production are competitive in distribution the results are generalised to economies with increasing returns to scale industries

bayesian learning in social networks we study the perfect bayesian equilibrium of a sequential learning model over a general social network each individual receives a signal about the underlying state of the world observes the past actions of a stochastically generated neighbourhood of individuals and chooses one of two possible actions the stochastic process generating the neighbourhoods defines the network topology we characterize pure strategy equilibria for arbitrary stochastic and deterministic social networks and characterize the conditions under which there will be asymptotic learning convergence in probability to the right action as the social network becomes large we show that when private beliefs are unbounded meaning that the implied likelihood ratios are unbounded there will be asymptotic learning as long as there is some minimal amount of expansion in observations we also characterize conditions under which there will be asymptotic learning when private beliefs are bounded

corporate versus independent new ventures resource strategy and performance differences abstract this study examines differences between independent ventures ivs which are established by individual entrepreneurs and corporate ventures cvs which are controlled by larger companies it focuses on differences between these ventures related to the resources strategies and performance of firms in the computer and communications equipment manufacturing industries thus the findings increase the understanding of the different challenges faced by each venture type and provide insight into how each venture type should be managed the study finds that managers of cvs and ivs emphasized different resources and strategies specifically cvs emphasized the following resources internal capital sources proprietary knowledge and marketing expertise ivs emphasized external capital sources technical expertise and development of brand identification they also differed in their strategies ivs pursued greater strategic breadth more customer service and focused more on specialty products the findings that cvs had less strategic breadth was surprising in that cvs emphasized resources such as internal capital sources which could make pursuing broad strategies more feasible for cvs it is possible that some cvs do not pursue broad strategies because they may be infringing upon someone else s turf within the corporation and thus may be discouraged in spite of finding significant strategy and resource differences the study found that ivs and cvs did not differ in performance and that resources were not directly related to performance based on the concept of equifinality it follows that both venture types can be equally successful even if they follow different roads to success success may be less a function of the different resources ivs and cvs have and more a function of what strategies the firms choose based upon their resources strategy variables did relate to performance a low cost strategy lowered performance regardless of venture type and the influence of an aggressive strategy i e wide strategic breadth on performance depended upon venture origin managers pursuing a low cost strategy may have had lower performance if they became penny wise and pound foolish missing opportunities in their efforts to lower costs this suggests that regardless of venture type managers of new ventures in these industries and perhaps in other volatile industries may need to be opportunistic this study indicates that pursuing broad strategies increased the performance of ivs and decreased the performance of cvs this finding was surprising in that cvs had greater resources which one might think would lead to successful implementation of aggressive strategies in securing enough resources to pursue aggressive strategies from their parents cvs may lose the freedom of action they need to cope with the dynamism of high technology industries this suggests that managers of cvs within the computer and communications equipment manufacturing industries should either not pursue broad strategies or if pursuing broad strategy they should maintain their flexibility in contrast ivs that pursued broad strategies achieved higher performance indicating that perhaps ivs unencumbered by the bureaucracy that characterizes cvs may be able to pursue aggressive strategies while simultaneously maintaining flexibility thus this study offers iv and cv managers several valuable insights first it argues that managers of each type of venture may need to pursue different strategies to increase venture performance and make optimal use of their unique resources furthermore it suggests that cv managers encounter difficulties in applying resources to strategies and not in accessing resources whereas political obstacles may occur cv managers may primarily encounter these difficulties when trying to implement strategies rather than when accumulating resources from the parent suggesting a pitfall that managers of cvs and their parents need to avoid although this study has indicated that both venture types can be equally successful it suggests that they may face different obstacles and follow different roads to success

religious participation and income the relationship between religion and income has been explored in several studies in this paper we extend this inquiry by arguing that religious participation through its effects on preferences and net earnings potential reduces participants incomes similarly we argue that high incomes discourage religious participation by encouraging individuals to substitute market work for religious activities in an empirical model we simultaneously estimate the effects of religious participation on income and income on religious participation using us state data on per capita personal income and church membership the results strongly support our hypotheses 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

toward an integrated approach to industry dynamics and labor mobility industrial dynamics and labour mobility are two fields of economic research that have developed fast in recent years but along what are essentially separate lines this paper shows that the processes those two fields deal with can be highly interdependent and demonstrates the usefulness of and the opportunity for an integrated approach to the dynamics of industries and labour mobility it concludes with a list of questions that inform a research agenda dedicated to such approach

introduction to the economics of religion after a very long hiatus economists have begun again to study the relationship between economics and religion this article seeks to summarize and evaluate the principal themes and empirical findings that have appeared in some 200 recent papers on the economics of religion although some of the research concerns the economic consequences of religiosity most applies standard economic theory to the study of individual religious activity the characteristics of religious groups and the impact of regulation and competition on religious markets

the impact of charitable subsidies on religious giving and attendance evidence from panel data the literature documents that charitable giving is responsive to tax subsidies but often ignores the spillover effects of such policies this paper investigates the spillover effects of charitable subsidies on religious participation using individual level panel data the results show that religious giving and participation are complements the implied cross price elasticity of religious participation with respect to the after tax price of giving is 0 27 furthermore a 1 increase in the amount of religious contributions is associated with a 0 4 increase in religious attendance these results are robust under several different specifications and highlight the positive externalities created by charitable subsidies

the role of contractual governance flexibility in realizing the outcomes of key customer relationships abstract an entrepreneurial firm s relationships with customers suppliers investors universities and other organizations have a significant and long lasting impact on the survival and success of the firm yet little research has focused on how the management of these relationships influences outcomes for entrepreneurial firms this paper focuses on the customer relationships of new technology based firms ntbfs we aim to contribute to the literature on the governance of exchange relationships between ntbfs and their customers further in so doing we seek to explore the implications of such governance for the performance of new firms because of their small size their liabilities of newness and their highly specialized knowledge intensive resources ntbfs are able to maintain only a limited number of close customer relationships consequently ntbfs often become highly dependent on one or a few of their customers in this study we focus on the relationships between ntbfs and their single largest customers we refer to the customer that accounts for the highest proportion of an ntbf s total revenue as the key customer strategic management literature resource dependence theory and transaction cost economics emphasize the risks associated with being dependent on an exchange relationship focusing on the opportunistic use of power by the exchange partner these perspectives suggest that firms can minimize their external dependencies and protect themselves against opportunism through the use of contracts the present paper expands this view by also examining how flexibility in exchange governance may unlock potential benefits or dampen potential dangers that an ntbf faces in its commitment to its single largest customer e g sharing the costs and risks of r d with the customer improving the reputation of the ntbf and realizing savings in sales and marketing costs we examine the extent to which the realization of the potential positive and negative outcomes of a high level of dependence are moderated by the flexibility of the exchange partners attitudes toward contractual agreements the research question that we seek to answer is does the manner in which a contractual agreement is implemented affect the outcomes of a customer relationship for an ntbf at high levels of exchange dependence on the key customer we develop a set of hypotheses that examines how the governance of the key customer relationship affects the ntbf s new product development reputation and sales costs when exchange dependence on the key customer is high we use the term contractual governance flexibility to refer to the extent to which the exchange partners are willing to adjust to changes in the relationship instead of relying on the contract we test the hypotheses with survey data from 195 ntbfs in the uk the results of regression analyses reveal that contractual governance flexibility moderates the relationship between exchange dependence and outcomes in relationships with a high level of exchange dependence greater contractual governance flexibility was associated with greater new product development and sales cost advantages no such benefits were realized for relationships in which exchange partners relied heavily on the contract these findings are important because they suggest that by relaxing formal contractual mechanisms governing a relationship ntbfs can derive benefits from key customer relationships that are characterized by a high level of dependence our findings suggest that at high levels of exchange dependence on key customers ntbfs can benefit when greater contractual governance flexibility is present our data indicated that interestingly ntbfs tend to do just the opposite at higher levels of exchange dependence ntbfs are inclined to rely increasingly on the contract by so doing they may fail to realize the potential benefits of the relationships such as gaining access to complementary resources and reducing costs these outcomes which may be derived from dependent exchange relationships by means of contractual governance flexibility can have a significant influence on the long term development and competitive advantage of an entrepreneurial firm

does where you stand depend on where you sit tithing donations and self serving beliefs economists and psychologists argue that individuals skew personal beliefs to accord with their own interests to test for the presence of self serving beliefs we surveyed 1 200 members of the mormon church about tithing a tithe is a voluntary contribution equal to 10 percent of income since respondents must decide privately what income items to tithe we observe how the income definition depends on an individual s religious and financial incentives we find surprisingly little evidence that an individual s financial situation influences beliefs about what counts as income for the tithe however ambiguity increases the role for self serving biases jel a12 d63

the internationalization of new and small firms a resource based view abstract this paper seeks to enhance understanding of the internationalization of small and medium sized enterprises smes the study focuses upon the following issues can the characteristics of principal founders businesses and the external environment at one point in time be used to explain at a later date whether a firm is still an exporter or a nonexporter whether exporting firms are larger in size than nonexporting firms whether exporting firms report superior performance than nonexporting firms and whether exporting firms are more likely to survive than nonexporting firms to address these questions this study draws upon a sample of 621 manufacturing construction and services businesses located in twelve contrasting environments in great britain surveyed first in 1990 91 and then re interviewed in 1997 a resource based view is reviewed to identify the range of factors encouraging some owner managed smes to enter export markets four categories of human and financial capital are examined general human capital resources the principal founder s management know how the principal founder s specific industry know how and a principal founder s ability to obtain financial resources that can act as a buffer against random shocks variables relating to resource availability in the external environment were also collected and considered control variables previous studies have highlighted substantial industry differences in the propensity for businesses to enter export markets as well as to survive the principal industrial activity of each business in 1990 91 was therefore considered a control variable variables collected during the 1990 91 survey were selected to explain variations in the propensity to export reported by surviving independent firms in 1997 after elimination of missing values the working sample was reduced to 116 independent firms for this study 86 nonexporters and 30 exporters in 1997 in addition the 21 variables were selected to explain variations in business size in 1997 profit performance relative to competitors reported in 1997 changes in employment over the 1990 91 to 1997 period and business survival over the 1990 91 to 1997 period 213 survivors and 395 nonsurvivors multivariate statistical analysis confirmed that previous experience of selling goods or services abroad is a key influence encouraging firms to export businesses with older principal founders with more resources denser information and contact networks and considerable management know how are significantly more likely to be exporters further businesses with principal founders that had considerable industry specific knowledge are markedly more likely to be exporters businesses principally engaged in the service sectors and those located in urban areas are significantly less likely to be exporters a key finding of this study is that the explanatory variables significantly associated with the propensity to export sales abroad are not the same as those significantly associated with selected size and performance measures the resource based explanatory variables selected fail to significantly detect employment growing firms over the 1990 91 to 1997 period they also fail to significantly distinguish surviving independent firms from nonsurviving firms results from this study will provide policy makers and practitioners with additional insights into the key resource based factors associated with the decision by new and small independent firms to export sales abroad practitioners and policy makers can focus upon the characteristics of principal founders businesses and the external environment to predict the subsequent propensity of an independent firm to be an exporter policy makers and practitioners who want more new and small firms to export outside their local areas may prefer to target their resources and assistance to the relatively smaller proportion of firms that have the business and principal founder profiles that are significantly associated with a firm being an exporter

choice between non equity entry modes an organizational capability perspective many studies have examined the choice between different types of equity and non equity modes however none has focused on the choice between different types of non equity modes that service firms employ routinely this study develops a theoretical framework based on the organizational capability perspective to explain the choice between two non equity modes franchising and management service contracts while previous studies are based on the premise that foreign market entrants choose a mode equity or non equity that offers them most control given their particular circumstances the premise of this study is that foreign entrants choose a non equity mode that in addition offers effective transfer of the firm s capabilities to the host country venture

old boy networks as screening mechanisms this paper studies a fulfilled expectations equilibrium in situations in which intermediaries provide personal opinions on the likelihood of success of personnel projects or investments each referee must recommend some candidates from a group of people about whom he has private information the employer uses the recommendations to choose the workers using his expectations about the quality of the recommended and the nonrecommended applicants although the referees use their information strategically the competition among them produces optimal use of the information in the sense that employers make the same choices in equilibrium as they would if they had the same information as the referees

do religious proscriptions matter evidence from a theory based test a large literature shows that religious participation is associated with various behaviors and outcomes but researchers lack an accepted instrument for religion and have struggled to establish whether these associations are causal using the canonical economic model of religiosity i develop an empirical test to investigate the importance of religious participation in particular religious proscriptions and rules on determining behavior the test relies on exogenous variation in the cost of secular activities rather than an instrument for religious participation several empirical applications of this test are conducted the results indicate a strong role for religious proscriptions in determining behavior

the long term impact of the earned income tax credit on children s education and employment outcomes using 4 decades of variation in the federal and state earned income tax credit eitc we estimate the impact of exposure to eitc expansions in childhood on education and employment outcomes in adu

employment wages and alcohol consumption in russia 1 introductionconcerns regarding the relationship between alcohol consumption and labor market productivity are well grounded if problem drinking or alcoholism is considered a disease then it may have depressant effects on labor market productivity causing reductions in employment earnings and other labor market outcomes mullahy and sindelar 1993 1996 kenkel and ribar 1994 however there is a medical literature that documents a u shaped relationship between alcohol consumption and the risk of cardiovascular disease according to this literature moderate drinkers have a lower risk of cardiovascular disease than do either abstainers or heavy drinkers beaglehole and jackson 1992 doll et al 1994 consistent with this evidence several economists have found a positive association between moderate drinking and earnings berger and leigh 1988 french and zarkin 1995 heien 1996 hamilton and hamilton 1997 zarkin et al 1998 macdonald and shields 2001 this article investigates the impact of alcohol consumption on employment and wages in russia the primary contributions of the article are twofold first it enhances the economic literature on the relationship between alcohol consumption and labor market behavior by using data from a longitudinal survey the use of a longitudinal data set enables the estimation of a fixed effects model which helps avoid the potential bias caused by unobserved individual factors not captured in cross sectional models the use of a fixed effects model is an important extension to the literature because the data sets used in previous studies are cross sectional and usually lack adequate variables that could serve as identifying instruments to control for the endogeneity of alcohol consumption 1 furthermore the richness of the data set used in this article allows for the application of three alternative measures of alcohol consumption in the empirical analysis this is important because the relationship between alcohol consumption and labor market outcomes may be sensitive to the alcohol measure that is used the second notable contribution of this article is that it provides the first empirical evidence on the association between alcohol consumption and labor market outcomes in russia excessive alcohol consumption is a widespread problem in russia where per capita alcohol consumption is around 14 liters per year the world health organization who considers 8 liters to be a sign that a country has a critical consumption level for health problems quinn judge 1997 furthermore the dramatic fluctuations in mortality rates experienced in russia over the past 15 years have generated considerable attention to the potential effect of alcohol consumption on the overall health of the russian population it is important to investigate how labor market outcomes would be affected by alcohol consumption in a country which demonstrates such dramatic fluctuations in alcohol consumption and mortality consistent with the previous studies cross sectional results generally support the hypothesis of an inverse u shaped relationship between alcohol consumption and wages and employment results from the fixed effect models are found to be quite different from those of cross sectional models the positive effect of alcohol consumption on employment disappears for both males and females once the individual fixed effects are controlled for the results of the wage model lend support to a small and linear return to alcohol consumption but the effects are significant only at the 10 level the fixed effects estimates are smaller in magnitude and estimated with less precision compared with cross sectional estimates section 2 reviews the previous literature section 3 discusses the conceptual issues and empirical strategy section 4 introduces the data set section 5 provides a discussion of the results and sensitivity analyses section 6 concludes the article

personal networks and nonagricultural employment the case of a farming village in the philippines abstract this article based on an intensive village survey in the philippines analyzes the effects of personal networks on rural villagers access to nonagricultural occupations and the terms of employment given to them a key finding is that personal networks are selectively used to reduce transaction costs and their impacts on employment conditions vary by size and by location of enterprises we find that when villagers are employed in unskilled work at small enterprises those who use family relative networks receive wage premiums however if we limit our sample to small enterprises located near our study village the family relative network premiums become insignificant presumably because of the overriding influence of the community wide network within a narrow local community contrary to the case of small enterprises unskilled workers wages at large enterprises are not much affected by personal networks but are largely determined by years of schooling and work experience the recent developmen

the positive theory of production externalities under perfect competition abstract aggregate cost and factor demand functions are used to develop a local envelope function which is applied in a general equilibrium model with production externalities to shed new light on the relationship between the true economy marginal costs and outputs this relationship induces a structure to the relationship between actual prices and outputs by means of the assumption of no factor demand reversals associated with externality effects we also provide generalisations of the stolper samuelson and rybczynski theorems highlighting the role of the externality effects

a three factor search model abstract a search model is constructed where three different types of workers with complementary skills search each other with search frictions wages of identically skilled workers may then differ according to the type of workers they work with unemployment can then consist of frictional structural induced and voluntary unemployment

the impact of family income on child achievement evidence from the earned income tax credit using an instrumental variables strategy we estimate the causal effect of income on children s math and reading achievement our identification derives from the large nonlinear changes in the earned income tax credit the largest of these changes increased family income by as much as 20 percent or approximately 2 100 between 1993 and 1997 our baseline estimates imply that a 1 000 increase in income raises combined math and reading test scores by 6 percent of a standard deviation in the short run test gains are larger for children from disadvantaged families and robust to a variety of alternative specifications jel h24 h31 i21 i38 j13

asset specificity and behavioral uncertainty as moderators of the sales growth employment growth relationship in emerging ventures sales growth and employment growth are the two most widely used growth indicators for new ventures yet sales growth and employment growth are not interchangeable measures of new venture growth rather they are related but somewhat independent constructs that respond differently to a variety of criteria most of the literature treats this as a methodological technicality however sales growth with or without accompanying employment growth has very different implications for managers and policy makers a better understanding of what drives these different growth metrics has the potential to lead to better decision making to improve that understanding we apply transaction cost economics reasoning to predict when sales growth will be or will not be accompanied by employment growth our results indicate that our predictions are borne out consistently in resource constrained contexts but not in resource munificent contexts