the global award for entrepreneurship research the international award for entrepreneurship and small business research was introduced in 1996 and it is now firmly established as the most prestigious award for outstanding research contributions in this subject area thanks to a generous donation from the swedish entrepreneur rune andersson it has been possible to make a number of changes aimed at strengthening global recognition of the prize even further the name is being changed to the global award for entrepreneurship research the financial side to the prize is being roughly doubled to 100 000 euros and the system for nomination evaluation and selection of future award winners is becoming more structured and transparent we present here the background to and the organization s behind the award briefly categorize the winners in the 1996 2008 period describe the present and the future system for nomination evaluation and selection of award winners and discuss the criteria for the selection of prize candidates and award winning contributions

on the demographic composition of colleges and universities in market equilibrium achieving diversity in the racial and ethnic makeup of the student body is one of the objectives that a college pursues in making decisions about admission and financial aid there has been a tremendous amount of debate about policies that colleges should adopt or be proscribed from adopting with respect to diversity rather than join this largely normative debate we adopt a positive focus investigating how colleges quests for ethnic and racial diversity affect admission and financial aid policies the college quality hierarchy and the distribution of whites and nonwhite students across colleges of differing qualities we provide a theoretical framework for investigating the effects of preferences for diversity augmented with results from a parallel computational model calibrated to u s data the effects of efforts to achieve diversity in colleges depend not only on the weight that colleges give to diversity but also on the value that prospective students place on diversity diversity may be of concern to no one only to colleges to both colleges and students or to colleges and a subset of students we first describe a baseline model without preferences for diversity and then examine three alternatives in which preferences for racial diversity are present

early decision and financial aid competition among need blind colleges and universities abstract this paper presents a stylized theoretical model of competition among need blind colleges and universities that implement early decision admissions under need blind admissions an applicant s financial aid status cannot affect their likelihood of admission in the model a need blind school can use early decision admissions as a screening mechanism to indirectly identify a student s ability to pay while superficially maintaining a need blind policy as a result in equilibrium non financial aid students are more likely to be admitted than financial aid students of comparable quality

israeli women entrepreneurs an examination of factors affecting performance abstract this article examines individual factors influencing performance of 200 israeli women owned businesses whereas research on women entrepreneurs is extensive in developed countries especially in the united states and europe there are comparatively few studies of performance of women owned businesses in non oecd countries there is evidence that social structures work family and organized social life vary among developed and developing countries as these relate to women entrepreneurs however these differences have not been considered as they may relate to theories explaining performance of women owned businesses the extent to which existing theories are useful in the context of non oecd countries is of increasing importance as women in these countries are assuming a greater role in enterprise creation and economic development as a result of radical geopolitical and economic policy changes worldwide in israel women suffer from occupational segregation and typically earn less money than their male counterparts despite a generally high level of education entrepreneurship offers a vehicle for israeli women to achieve economic parity approximately 5 1 of israeli women are self employed compared with 15 of israeli men of the 816 800 israeli working women this study is the first systematic investigation of performance variation among israeli women entrepreneurs thereby contributing to our understanding of women s entrepreneurship in non oecd countries five theoretical perspectives explain performance individual motivations and goals social learning entrepreneurial socialization network affiliation contacts and membership in organizations human capital level of education business skills and environmental influences location sectoral participation and sociopolitical variables each of these perspectives is associated with empirical work showing relationships between these individual level factors and performance three questions directed this study 1 which factors influence the performance of israeli women entrepreneurs 2 which factors explain any variance in performance among businesses established by israeli women entrepreneurs 3 how similar are these explanatory factors to those found in other countries a sample of 220 israeli women business owners responded to a survey instrument originally composed by hisrich and brush 1982 1985 that was translated into hebrew and adapted to the particular conditions of the israeli population a majority of the questionnaires was distributed at meetings of professional associates of women entrepreneurs and returned by mail but one fourth was distributed to women who were not members of any professional association no significant differences were found between the respondents who were members or non members of associations reliability testing showed alpha coefficients of 0 65 and higher for scaled questions which is acceptable for survey data statistical analyses including pearsons s correlations and multiple regressions examined relationships between factors identified from theoretical perspectives and performance which was measured by profitability income size number of employees and revenues demographic variables were examined and the age of the woman entrepreneur s children was significantly related to profitability p of the five theoretical perspectives results showed network affiliation motivation human capital and environmental factors affected different aspects of performance whereas social learning theory or existence of a role model had no significant effect on performance outcomes network affiliation was significantly related to profitability p motivations showed a strong relationship to performance factor analysis identified three basic groups of motives achievement independence and economic necessity similar to findings in other countries achievement motives were highly related to personal income whereas economic necessity was significantly related to both profitability and revenue analyses of human capital variables showed mixed results education level areas of study and previous entrepreneurial experience had no effect on previous experience the fact that this population was highly educated 51 had university degrees may have impacted on this result consistent with prior research findings previous experience in the industry had a direct and significant effect on performance p p p this study supports previous research from the united states and europe on women entrepreneurs which found that performance is related to previous industry experience business skills and achievement motivation however the differential effects of network affiliations was significantly more important for women entrepreneurs in israel affiliation with a single network was highly related to profitability whereas involvement in multiple networks was detrimental to both revenues and the number of employees these findings imply that to perform well israeli women entrepreneurs should gain related industry experience develop business skills and seek to achieve success most importantly commitment to a single network for support and advice is better than a loose alignment with many support groups this research has implications for studies of women entrepreneurs in other non oecd as well as developing countries in countries such as russia or china anecdotal evidence shows self employment offers women an opportunity to improve their economic status as more capitalistic policies are adopted the extent to which individual factors found important in this study such as business skills motivations previous industry experience and network affiliation affect performance in these countries is a topic for future investigation this study suggests that individual factors affect performance differentially as a consequence of variations in social structures work organized social life and family future research should explore the extent to which this is the case examination of aspects of organizational strategies and government policies as these influence performance is another topic for future study

gender as a determinant of small business performance insights from a british study the performance of small businesses that is the ability of small firms to contribute to job and wealth creation through business start up survival and growth has been an important area of policy and academic debate in the 1980s surprisingly little has been written about gender and small business performance our literature search revealed only a small number of studies of any substance on this subject though over forty made some mention of it most studies shied away from direct examination of quantitative performance measures such as jobs created sales turnover annual growth tending to concentrate on qualitative measures of success or failure the paper examines small business performance and gender using data obtained from a survey of 600 300 women 300 men scottish and english small business ownermanagers part of a three year study on the impact of gender on small business management analyses suggest that the relationship between gender and small business performance is complex but that gender still appears to be a significant determinant even after other key factors are controlled for

competitive search equilibrium in this paper i construct an equilibrium for markets with frictions which is competitive in the sense that all agents are price takers and maximize utility subject to a set of market parameters i show that the equilibrium allocation is socially optimal i also show how the competitive search equilibrium can be achieved if employers with vacancies can advertise publicly the wages they pay

discrimination in an equilibrium search model i construct an equilibrium search model where some employers have a distaste for hiring minority workers and show that this bias results in economic discrimination against minority workers although only unprejudiced firms hire minority workers minority workers receive lower wages than workers not facing discrimination whenever any employers in the market have a distaste for minority workers one implication of the model is that gender or racial wage differentials understate the utility loss from discrimination in addition the wages of minority workers increase when their proportion increases in the labor market

are women owner managers challenging our definitions of entrepreneurship an in depth survey in the quebec city area 400 women owner managers of business in the three industrial sectors answered a detailed questionnaire and 75 of these subsequently underwent in depth interviews the main dimensions explored were the characteristics of the entrepreneurs and their firms the experience of starting a business the success criteria used and their vision for the future of their firms the results suggest the importance to these women of a model of small and stable business this is not a transitory phase for their firm most choose and value such a scale of business and they seek recognition for what they do this model seems to represent an innovative adaptation to their professional social family and personal demands and challenges our definitions of entrepreneurship and of serious business

a general equilibrium analysis of state and private colleges and access to higher education in the u s abstract we develop a general equilibrium model of the market for undergraduate higher education that captures the coexistence of public and private colleges the large degree of quality differentiation among them and the tuition and admission policies that emerge from their competition for students a quantitative version of the model matches well estimates of enrollment elasticities variation in need based and merit based institutional aid with respectively student income and ability and aggregate characteristics of u s higher education including college attendance in public and private schools tuition levels and the provision of federal aid predictions about the provision of federal aid and the distribution of students across colleges by ability and income match the empirical counterparts well we use the model to examine the consequences of federal and state aid policies a one third increase in the maximum federal aid increases college attendance by 6 of the initial college population most of the increase being in state colleges and mainly of poor students elite private colleges reduce institutional aid and use the net funding gain to spend more on educational inputs and to substitute some highly able poor students for less able rich students reductions in federal or state aid result in substantially reduced attendance mainly by poor students reductions of support to state colleges induce private colleges to increase enrollments modestly and improve in quality as demand shifts toward them

discontinuance among new firms in retail the influence of initial resources strategy and gender abstract women owned businesses represent one of the fastest growing segments of the u s economy their rate has increased more than six fold since 1970 despite this growth rate the number of firms owned by women still lags behind that of men and the sales and income of women owned firms are significantly lower than those of men owned firms the discrepancy between the number of businesses owned by women and men and their economic success has been a popular theme among researchers some have suggested that performance differentials result from disparate structural positions women and men occupy in work and society whereas others attribute the differences to deep rooted interpersonal orientations this study examines whether the performance differences can be explained by variations in initial resources and founding strategy we test whether women have fewer start up resources and if they do whether they can compensate for these deficiencies through their founding strategy recent work in social psychology argues that strategic choice is shaped by experiences to which individuals have been subjected and that women and men have fundamentally different socialization experiences we test the assumption that if the strategy that women owners adopt exploits the unique capabilities they derive from their socialization they can improve the performance of their firms and ward off discontinuance we examine the discontinuance pattern of 203 new firms in the retail industry this industry was selected because women entrepreneurs often choose to operate in this industry giving us a basis for comparing women owned and men owned firms we classify the firms into six strategy archetypes the arche types range from a broad focus where founders emphasize multiple strategic foci simultaneously to narrowly targeted differentiation strategies we assume that the experiential base of women entrepreneurs limits their successfully executing pricing strategies we hypothesize that women led firms decrease the odds of discontinuing by adopting one of two strategy types 1 narrow differentiation strategies that seek to satisfy a narrow segment of the market and that do not rely on pricing or 2 broad generalists strategies that emphasize service and quality but not pricing and take advantage of women s capability for handling multiple stakeholders simultaneously the results offer support for using an integrative model to explain the performance of women owned firms women owned firms have higher odds of discontinuing than men owned firms and women appear to have fewer resources to start their businesses women owners were less likely to have instrumental experience from working in the retail industry and start their businesses on a smaller scale then men but were no less likely then their male counterparts to have access to credit from formal financial institutions or to be disadvantaged by starting fewer other new businesses despite some apparent situational disadvantage resource deficiencies do not appear to affect the odds of women owned businesses discontinuing as much as they do men owned initiatives the findings indicate support for the supposition that women owners can use founding strategy to decrease the odds of discontinuing business a broad generalists strategy that represents a multi focused approach was found to benefit women owned businesses most overall the results suggest that men use prior business experience and human capital to affect the survival status of their businesses women appear to find strategic choice more beneficial future research is recommended to further elaborate the integrative model special attention should be given to developing alternatives to measures traditionally used in gender research many researchers charge that those typically used reflect male derived measures similarly greater attention should be given to understanding why the scale of women owned businesses at start up is substantially smaller than that of men since scale has been shown to be related to subsequent growth and survival

testing the female underperformance hypothesis most previous studies have found evidence at the aggregate level that female entrepreneurs underperform relative to their male counterparts this study conducts a comprehensive test of this finding the test is conducted on a large swedish sample of 4200 entrepreneurs 405 females with 1 to 20 employees in all sectors of the economy our study confirms the results of several previous studies that female entrepreneurs tend to underperform relative to men when the data is examined at the most aggregate level at the same time our data reveals sharp structural differences between male and female entrepreneurs in an extensive multi variate regression with a large number of controls it turns out that female underperformance disappears for three out of four performance variables the only exception is sales no gender difference is found for profitability a more detailed analysis reveals that the evidence of female underperformance is much weaker in larger firms and nonexistent in firms with only one employee if it is true that female entrepreneurs on average have weaker preferences for sales growth while we consistently find that they do not underperform in terms of profitability our study provides no support for female underperformance given differences in preferences

educational vouchers and cream skimming educational vouchers and cream skimming epple and romano 1998 show equilibrium provision of education by public and private schools has the latter skim off the wealthiest and most able students and universal vouchers lead to further cream skimming here we study voucher design that injects private school competition and increases technical efficiencies without cream skimming conditioning vouchers on student ability without restriction on participating schools policies fails to affect significantly cream skimming however by adding restrictions like tuition constraints such vouchers can reap the benefits of school competition without increased stratification this is accomplished while allowing voluntary participation in the voucher system and without tax increases

does affirmative action work caste gender college quality and academic success in india public policy in modern india features affirmative action programs intended to reduce inequality that stems from a centuries old caste structure and history of disparate treatment by gender we study the effects of one such affirmative action program an admissions policy that fixes percentage quotas common across more than 200 engineering colleges for disadvantaged castes and for women we show that the program increases college attendance of targeted students particularly at relatively higher quality institutions an important concern is that affirmative action might harm intended beneficiaries by placing them in academic programs for which they are ill prepared we find no evidence of such adverse impacts

nobel laureate the many other allais paradoxes maurice allais is know for the 1952 allais paradox but other very important parts of his work remain virtually unknown to most economists as paul samuelson 1983 wrote had allais earliest writings been in english a whole generation of economic theory would have taken a different course perhaps the nobel award will encourage economists to examine his work more closely let me first give a quick portrait of maurice allais and then list some of his major contributions to the theory of markets to the theory of capital to decision making under risk and to monetary dynamics

frictional assignment i efficiency abstract this paper examines the two sided matching problem where the agents on each side of the market are heterogeneous and the matching process is time consuming this is cast in a labor market setting where workers of different skills match with different machine qualities i characterize the efficient allocation and then show that it can be decentralized by a market mechanism the efficient assignment is not always positively assortative despite the fact that machine qualities and skills are complementary in production to decentralize the efficient allocation the market mechanism requires the firms to post wages and commit each machine quality to a particular skill implications on wage inequality are briefly examined journal of economic literature classification numbers j31 e24 j64

racial discrimination in labor markets with posted wage offers we analyze race discrimination in labor markets in which wage offers are posted if employers with job vacancies receive multiple applicants they choose the most qualified but may choose arbitrarily among equally qualified applicants in the model firms post wages workers choose where to apply and firms decide which workers to hire labor market frictions greatly amplify racial disparities so mild discriminatory tastes or small productivity differences can produce large wage differentials between the races compared with the nondiscriminatory equilibrium the discriminatory equilibrium features lower net output lower wages for both white and black workers and greater profits for firms this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

how did the notional interest deduction affect belgian smes capital structure the recently introduced risk capital allowance in belgium which allows a notional interest deduction to be denoted nid hereafter on a firm s adjusted equity for tax purposes has mitigated the tax discrepancy between equity and debt financing to our knowledge we provide the first empirical study of the extent to which this regulation has resulted in a strengthening of small and medium sized enterprises to be denoted smes hereafter solvency which was one of its most prominent objectives results from logit regressions reveal that the probability of adopting the nid is higher for lowly leveraged smes smes without experience with the tax exempt investment reserve and smes with a sound knowledge of the notional interest deduction regulation results on the impact of the nid on the capital structure of smes based on panel and first differences regressions reveal that this measure did not result in a significant change of smes leverage in view of the discussion regarding the optimal tax and legislative framework that governments should put in place poutziouris et al j small bus enterp dev 6 1 7 25 1999 these results cast doubt on the risk capital allowance as it stands now being the right government instrument to contribute at least in the short term to creating a pro enterprising tax and legislative climate for smes we conclude by providing some general suggestions for improving the effectiveness of the risk capital allowance

william j baumol an entrepreneurial economist on the economics of entrepreneurship william j baumol is the 2003 winner of the international award for entrepreneurship and small business research throughout his career baumol has urged the profession to pay attention to the instrumental role of entrepreneurship in economic renewal and growth at the same time he has insisted that economists continue to use their usual tool box when the purview of analysis is extended to entrepreneurship hence baumol can be characterized as a revolutionary from within in this article we present and discuss baumol s research contribution in the areas of entrepreneurship and small business economics notably from a growth perspective in addition to placing his work in these areas into the wider context of his full contribution we emphasize baumol s findings that growth cannot be explained by the accumulation of various factors of production per se human creativity and productive entrepreneurship are needed to combine the inputs in profitable ways as a result an institutional environment that encourages productive entrepreneurship and human experimentation becomes the ultimate determinant of economic growth

discrimination and skill differences in an equilibrium search model in this paper we analyze an equilibrium search model with three sources for wage an d unemployment differentials among workers with the same observed human capital but differen t appearance race unobserved productivity skill search in tensities and discrimination becker 1957 due to an appearance based employer disutility factor because they affect the earnings distributions differently empirical identification of these potential sources for the explanation of wage an d unemployment differentials is possible we show that the structural parameters of the model including the firm s disutility from certain workers are identifiab le using standard labor market survey data we demonstrate identification using data from the national longitudinal survey of youth estimation of these parameters by matching moments from a sample of black and white high school graduate s implies a blacks have a 9 lower productivi ty level than whites b the disutility factor in employer s preferences is one third of the white s productivity level and c 50 of firms have a disutility factor in their utility toward blacks

holdups and efficiency with search frictions a natural holdup problem arises in a market with search frictions firms have to make a range of investments before finding their employees and larger investments translate into higher wages in particular when wages are determined by ex post bargaining the equilibrium is always inefficient recognizing that capital intensive production relations have to pay higher wages firms reduce their investments this can only be prevented by removing all the bargaining power from the workers but this in turn depresses wages below their social product and creates excessive entry of firms in contrast to this benchmark we show that efficiency is achieved when firms post wages and workers can direct their search toward more attractive offers this efficiency result generalizes to an environment with imperfect information where workers only observe a few of the equilibrium wage offers we show that the underlying reason for efficiency is not wage posting per se but the ability of workers to direct their search toward more capital intensive jobs

ex ante price offers in matching games non steady states a matching problem is considered in which sellers can publicly commit to a trading price that differs from the price at which buyers expect to trade elsewhere in the market when demand and supply are nearly equal the equilibrium ex ante price offer lies below the price associated with the nash bargaining split this relationship reverses when the level of excess demand is large sellers always have an incentive to make ex ante offers when prices elsewhere are determined by nash bargaining this can be interpreted to mean that nash bargaining is an unstable pricing institution copyright 1991 by the econometric society

the diana project pioneering women studying pioneering women the 2007 winner of the international award for entrepreneurship and small business research is the diana project team candida brush nancy carter elizabeth gatewood patricia greene and myra hart the diana project builds on the vast experience of the team in the field of entrepreneurship in general and women entrepreneurship business growth and venture capital in particular the diana project has investigated the supply and demand side of growth capital for women entrepreneurs the research contributes to entrepreneurship theory as well as to practice filling a void in knowledge on growth oriented women entrepreneurship in this article we present and discuss the research contribution of the diana project in the areas of entrepreneurship women entrepreneurship and venture capital we specifically discuss the value of researching a specific group of women entrepreneurs those who want to grow their businesses that very clearly demonstrates the positive potential of female entrepreneurship the diana project has also moved research on women s entrepreneurship forward since its framework does not treat women entrepreneurs as other i e the project does not presuppose that women s entrepreneurship is similar to or different from men s entrepreneurship it assumes that women s entrepreneurship is entrepreneurship and studies it from that point of view

pricing and matching with frictions suppose that n buyers each want one unit and m sellers each have one or more units of a good sellers post prices and then buyers choose sellers in symmetric equilibrium similar sellers all post one price and buyers randomize hence more or fewer buyers may arrive than a seller can accommodate we call this frictions we solve for prices and the endogenous matching function for finite n and m and consider the limit as n and m grow the matching function displays decreasing returns but converges to constant returns we argue that the standard matching function in the literature is misspecified and discuss implications for the beveridge curve

wage differentials discrimination and efficiency abstract i analyze a large labor market where homogeneous firms post wages to direct the search of workers who differ in productivity i show that the model has a unique equilibrium the wage differential depends positively on the workers productivity differential only when the latter is large when the productivity differential is small high productivity workers get a lower wage than low productivity workers this reverse wage differential remains even when the productivity differential shrinks to zero however the equilibrium is socially efficient high productivity workers always get the employment priority and higher expected wages than low productivity workers although discrimination in terms of expected wages does not exist conventional measures are likely to incorrectly find discrimination in the model

spatial competition and the price of college i introduction over the last half century the u s higher educational system has been transformed from a collection of local independent college fiefdoms into a regionally and nationally integrated market in which universities compete for both resources and students as in hoxby 1997a concurrently duffy and goldberg 1998 contend that the most salient feature of the u s higher education market has been tuition increases that exceed both the rate of inflation and income growth combined with financial aid packages that increasingly emphasize merit over need the rising real cost of college in the midst of growing competition has become a source of considerable angst for parents university administrators and public policy analysts who are concerned that need blind admission goals are being sacrificed in favor of strategic enrollment management policies designed to attract the best and the brightest thus mcpherson and shapiro 1998 have asked if the rapidly rising cost of college begs the question of whether universities compete on price as opposed to some other metric such as reputation or resources this article is the first to empirically examine price setting practices among universities by questioning whether list tuitions i e the posted price or net tuitions i e the posted price minus financial aid of private universities respond to the geographic and qualitative proximity of competitors there are theoretical reasons to expect that the increasing integration of the higher education sector might affect tuitions particularly for selective private universities that are relatively unfettered by outside pricing constraints as discussed in bowen 1967 for example hoxby 1997b models integration as the opening of trade among autarkic colleges of varying quality trade is found to reduce the monopsony power of universities over local consumers and intensify their competition for high quality students who because they are both inputs into and consumers of a college education can improve institutional quality thus despite applicant pools well in excess of the number of enrollment slots ehrenberg 2000 has documented that most selective and well endowed institutions increasingly spend significant sums recruiting top applicants and use a combination of enrollment management tools such as merit aid early decision policies and campus amenities to lure top applicants to enroll the advent of individual college rankings further raised the enrollment management stakes by providing an easily observed quality metric as this measure has been found in monks and ehrenberg 1999 to influence a student s college choice one may anticipate that select institutions may have been afforded an ability to ramp up their list tuitions using their substantial endowments and the tuition revenue collected from the most financially able students to price discriminate in favor of needy academically able students as discussed in cook and frank 1993 ehrenberg and rizzo 2004 and hill winston and boyd 2004 nonetheless heller 2004 notes that the collective impact of such enrollment management practices in higher education as a whole is of particular policy concern because empirical evidence suggests needy students increasingly rely on non need based aid often in the form of loans to finance their college educations on the other hand a number of studies including those of allen and shen 1999 moore et al 1991 and parker and summers 1993 have documented that less selective private institutions also appear to be cognizant that their more selective competitors have greater resources and deeper applicant pools which yield greater demand elasticities for these institutions moreover as discussed in kane and orszag 2003 and rizzo 2004 less selective private institutions must increasingly ward off the potential flight of students to lower cost public institutions that have also been forced to manage enrollments in response to declining state government support

admission tuition and financial aid policies in the market for higher education we present an equilibrium model of the market for higher education our model simultaneously predicts student selection into institutions of higher education financial aid educational expenditures and educational outcomes we show that the model gives rise to a strict hierarchy of colleges that differ by the educational quality provided to the students we also develop a new estimation procedure that exploits the observed variation in prices within colleges identification is based on variation in endowments and technology it does not rely on observed variation in potentially endogenous characteristics of colleges such as peer quality measures and expenditures we estimate the structural parameters using data collected by the national center for education statistics and aggregate data from peterson s and the national science foundation

israel m kirzner an outstanding austrian contributor to the economics of entrepreneurship israel m kirzner is the 2006 winner of the international award for entrepreneurship and small business research in this essay we present and evaluate his main contributions to the economics of entrepreneurship