estimating residential demand for electricity in greece abstract this paper examines the residential demand for electricity in greece the issues of structural stability price and income sensitivity of both long and short run residential demand for electricity in greece were examined employing monthly data over the period 1986 1999 the long run residential demand for electricity is estimated taking into account changes in weather conditions weighted by the size of the population employing multivariate framework analysis a long run residential demand function for electricity sensitive to real income price level and weather conditions is found to exist and the importance of short run deviations is presented using vector error correction model vecm estimation the empirical evidence suggests the presence of a stable residential demand for electricity in greece both in the long and short run periods and the policy implications of such a relationship are presented

benefit entitlement and unemployment duration the role of policy endogeneity abstract the potential duration of benefits is generally viewed as an important determinant of unemployment duration this paper evaluates a unique policy change that prolonged entitlement to regular unemployment benefits from 30 weeks to a maximum of 209 weeks for elderly individuals in certain regions of austria in the evaluation we explicitly account for the fact that the program was an endogenous policy response to deteriorating labor market conditions for older workers in certain regions and sectors the main results are i rebp reduced the transition rate to jobs by 17 ii accounting for endogenous policy adoption is important and quantitatively significant

navigating the paradox of openness in energy and transport innovation insights from eight corporate clean technology research and development case studies using an inductive case study approach drawn from original interview data this article investigates the innovation approaches among a sample of international energy companies or corporate firms it first presents a conceptual framework synthesized from the business studies entrepreneurship evolutionary economics innovation studies management science organization studies political science and sociology literature this framework suggests that corporate approaches to clean technology innovation will cut across the four dimensions of organizational multiplicity and stakeholder involvement information sharing coordination and control and market orientation it then explores how eight firms the algal carbon conversion flagship and aurora algae biofuel dong and statoil carbon capture and storage tesla and volkswagen electric vehicles and siemens and vestas offshore wind turbines approach clean technology development with open innovation attributes mixed with closed attributes although the study finds striking similarities among the particular approaches embraced by each corporate actor it also notes that approaches are technology and firm specific and the potential for different permutations leads to an almost endless number of possible stylistic combinations the innovation profiles depicted also reveal conflict and competition among various stakeholders the implication being that corporate innovation in the energy sector remains a conflicted disjointed and messy process

corporate venturing and value creation a review and proposed framework abstract over the past decade companies worldwide have used corporate venturing cv as a means of revitalizing their operations building new capabilities and achieving strategic renewal creating value for shareholders business interest in cv has stimulated academic interest in the topic resulting in a rapidly growing but fragmented body of literature despite the growing international scholarly interest in cv researchers have devoted little effort to integrating prior findings in a cumulative fashion as a result studies do not build upon one another making it difficult to gauge the progress being made in addressing the fundamental research questions related to cv in this paper we examine the literature on cv seeking to synthesize integrate and link its key findings to do so we analyze this literature over the past decade to identify its major themes and research findings setting the stage for greater coherence in future research on cv we give special attention to the challenges and rewards of theory building in future cv research our review clearly shows that cv is an area of scholarly inquiry that has important implications for managerial practice

bridge jobs and partial retirement the job stopping process of older workers often includes some combination of postcareer bridge employment partial retirement and reverse retirement fewer than two fifths of household heads retire directly from career jobs over half partially retire at some point in their working lives and a quarter reenter the labor force after initially retiring in addition postcareer employment is frequently located outside the industry and occupation of the career job and there are important differences in postcareer labor force experiences by gender permanent income and career job pension status

job displacement and the transitions to re employment and early retirement for non employed older workers abstract despite the relatively higher frequency of job displacement among older workers in europe little is known about its effect on the work retirement decision employing individual data from the european community household panel for a number of countries with differences in their institutional environments the effect of job displacement for non employed workers is identified separately for the transitions into re employment and retirement the findings suggest that in countries with relatively more generous unemployment insurance provisions for the older unemployed which offer a pathway to early retirement older displaced workers exhibit lower re employment and higher retirement rates compared to the non displaced these results are robust to dynamic selection due to unobserved heterogeneity and to the endogeneity of displacement

to search or not to search the effects of ui benefit extension for the older unemployed abstract in finland the older unemployed can collect unemployment insurance benefits until retirement while the entitlement period for younger groups is two years in 1997 the eligibility age of persons benefiting from extended benefits was raised from 53 to 55 this paper takes advantage of this quasi experimental setting to identify the effect of extended benefits on transitions out of unemployment among the older unemployed we apply a competing risks version of a split population duration model to account for multiple exit routes and the possibility that some of the older unemployed may not be active in the labour market due to pension rules our finding is that roughly half of the unemployed with extended benefits withdraw from job search

lifeline electricity rates as an income transfer device the lifeline electricity rates are presumed to be inefficient because they violate optimal pricing principles but they may also be an ineffective and inequitable way to transfer assistance to low income households evidence is presented to challenge the assumption that simple demand changes will permit high consuming households to subsidize low income users social security food stamps and other social programs are better alternatives to a general income transfer 7 references 2 tables dck

contextual influences on the corporate entrepreneurship performance relationship a longitudinal analysis abstract over the past several years corporate entrepreneurship has been widely touted by executives and researchers alike as an effective means for revitalizing companies and improving their financial performance for the most part the call for greater entrepreneurial behavior on the part of established companies has been accepted on faith as an inherently desirable objective the implicit logic behind the pervasive belief in the value of corporate entrepreneurship seems to be that risk taking innovation and aggressive competitive action the key elements of entrepreneurial corporations will help in identifying and pursuing lucrative product market opportunities and in providing new bases for achieving superior competitive positions but what do we really know about the financial consequences of corporate entrepreneurship most of the evidence that corporate entrepreneurship pays off is anecdotal in nature or based on cross sectional studies that focus on the short term implications of entrepreneurial behaviors as such in a definitive sense we know very little about the financial consequences of corporate entrepreneurship in an attempt to improve our understanding of this issue this article describes a study of corporate entrepreneurship and its impact on company financial performance data were collected from three different samples over a seven year period to assess the longitudinal impact of corporate entrepreneurship on firm performance these samples consist of 24 medium sized manufacturing firms representing 14 industry segments 39 chemical companies and 45 fortune 500 industrial firms representing five industry segments data were gathered on each sample using both primary and secondary sources regression analysis was then used to analyze the data the results suggest that corporate entrepreneurship has a positive impact on financial measures of company performance this effect on performance which tends to be modest over the first few years increases over time suggesting that corporate entrepreneurship may indeed be a generally effective means for improving long term company financial performance moreover the results indicate that corporate entrepreneurship is a particularly effective practice among companies operating in hostile environments as opposed to benign environments the study has three principal implications for practicing managers first the study documents the general financial viability of engaging in corporate entrepreneurship this is not to suggest that corporate entrepreneurship is a panacea for improving financial performance however entrepreneurial behavior when considered on the whole i e across firms and industries is associated with superior financial performance second the study suggests a need to use a long term time horizon in order to adequately judge the financial consequences of corporate entrepreneurship the use of a shorter evaluation period may not allow sufficient time for entrepreneurial actions to have their full market and corresponding financial impact finally the study identifies the context specific character of effective entrepreneurial practice specifically corporate entrepreneurship appears to be a particularly effective strategic practice among firms operating in hostile business settings

early retirement and economic incentives in norway early retirement programmes have gradually reduced the retirement age from 67 to 62 for a majority of the labour force based on micro data for 1990 and 1992 we estimate a competing risk model with three states full retirement partial retirement part time work and full time work we then use the estimated model in simulations to study how financial incentives can be strengthened to extend working life financial incentives educational background and industry affiliation are found to influence retirement behaviour for low and medium incomes the tax system shifts the incentives heavily towards early retirement and in particular towards partial retirement combined with part time work

the rise in the disability rolls and the decline in unemployment between 1984 and 2001 the share of nonelderly adults receiving social security disability insurance income di rose by 60 percent to 5 3 million beneficiaries rapid program growth despite improving aggregate health appears to be explained by reduced screening stringency declining demand for less skilled workers and an unforeseen increase in the earnings replacement rate we estimate that the sum of these forces doubled the labor force exit propensity of displaced high school dropouts after 1984 lowering measured u s unemployment by one half a percentage point steady state calculations augur a further 40 percent increase in the rate of di receipt

the employment effect of stricter rules for eligibility for di evidence from a natural experiment in sweden we study the effect of a reform of the swedish disability insurance di program whereby the special eligibility rules for workers in the age group 60 to 64 were abolished first we use a differences in differences approach to study changes in the disability take up as compared to the age group 55 to 59 then we use a similar approach to study to what extent the employment effect of the reform is crowded out by an increase in the utilization of the sickpay insurance si and or the unemployment insurance ui in an extended analysis we study the effect of firm closure on employment and the utilization of different labor market insurance programs in different age groups before and after the reform

reduction in the long term unemployment of the elderly a success story from finland in finland the elderly unemployed are allowed to collect unemployment benefits up to the age of 60 when they can retire via a particular unemployment pension in 1997 the eligibility age of persons benefiting from this scheme was raised from 53 to 55 we consider changes in the risk of unemployment unemployment durations and the exit states before and after the reform in the duration analysis a flexible treatment design is adopted by allowing for quantile treatment effects we apply three different non and semiparametric methods which all produce robust and coherent results since the reform the group aged 53 54 has had a lower risk of unemployment shorter unemployment durations and higher exit rates to employment and it is no longer distinguishable from the group aged 50 52 we estimate the amount of unemployment benefits saved due to the reform

disability insurance benefits and labor supply a critical input for assessing the optimal size of disability insurance programs is the elasticity of labor force participation with respect to the generosity of benefits unfortunately this parameter has been difficult to estimate in the context of the u s disability insurance program since all workers face an identical benefits schedule i surmount this problem by studying the experience of canada which operates two distinct disability insurance programs for quebec and for the rest of canada the latter program raised its benefits by 36 percent in january 1987 whereas benefits in quebec were constant i find a sizable labor supply response to the policy change my central estimates imply an elasticity of labor force nonparticipation with respect to disability insurance benefits of 0 28 0 36

methodological and theoretical issues and advancements in cross cultural research this paper summarizes the issues and concerns of critics of cross cultural research and discusses how they are being addressed by researchers given the state of the art and the complexity of this field of research the author recommends more inductive research and the pursuit of appropriate but not overambitious sampling designs so as to increase our understanding of cultures and encourage the building of richer theory bases taking an optimistic view of the field the author predicts useful contributions by researchers which will enrich the art and science of cross cultural management

the effect of social security on labor supply a cohort analysis of the notch generation this article uses aggregate birth year calendar year level data derived from the current population survey cps to estimate the effect of social security wealth on the labor supply of older men in the 1970s and 1980s the analysis focuses on measuring the impact of the 1977 amendments to the social security act which created a substantial unanticipated reduction in social security wealth for individuals born after 1916 this differential in benefits has become known as the benefit notch results indicate that labor supply continued to decline for the notch babies who received lower social security benefits than earlier cohorts

early retirement policy in the presence of competing exit pathways evidence from pension reforms in finland i study the effects of changes in the eligibility age thresholds for unemployment and part time pensions and the effect of tightening medical criteria for disability pension eligibility in finland particular attention is paid to the spillover effects of the pension reforms these pension reforms jointly raised the average age at which workers leave employment by 3 9 months mainly due to a sharp drop in disability pension enrolment from age 58 upwards and a lower incidence of unemployment at younger ages these effects are heterogeneous much of which is attributable to the spillover effects that vary across individuals

residential demand for electricity abstract short and long run responses by households to changes in the price of electricity are estimated using data which permit measurement of the marginal price of electricity the infra marginal demand charge and estimates of household appliance stocks the price elasticities of high and low level users of electricity are compared the theoretical bias in price elasticity estimates resulting from neglect of the infra marginal demand charge is shown to be empirically insignificant

can social security explain trends in labor force participation of older men in the united states after a long decline the labor force participation rate lfpr of older men in the united states leveled off in the 1980s and began to increase in the late 1990s we examine how changes in social security rules affected these trends we attribute only a small portion of the decline from the 1960s 80s to the increasing generosity of social security over this period increases in the full retirement age and the delayed retirement credit explain one quarter to one half of the recent increase in the lfpr increasing educational attainment and increasing lfpr of married women also contributed to the recent rise

an examination of the psychometric properties of some commonly researched individual differences job and organizational variables in two cultures this study examines the transferability and applicability of selected measures of individual differences job and organizational climate factors across two cultures questionnaires were administered to a sample of 267 white collar bank employees in the u s and 307 bank employees in india the individual difference dimensions examined were four manifest needs sense of competence and locus of control the job factors included variety autonomy identity and feedback the organizational climate factors related to communication stress participation in decision making and self esteem from the workplace the data were analyzed for internal consistency dimensionality and criterion related validity the results showed that the job and organizational climate measures were more reliable and were related more consistently to the criterion measures than the individual difference measures both within and across cultures the results suggested that psychometrically sound measures may be transferable to other cultures

a structural dynamic analysis of retirement behaviour in the netherlands this study focuses on determinants of elderly labour force participation and retirement decisions in the netherlands this is analysed by a dynamic programming model for the simultaneous choice of retirement age and route which includes social insurance and private pensions eligibility conditions for early retirement lifecycle wage and health profiles and layoffs special attention is given to opportunities for and the effect of participation policies results show that institutional structures of benefit and pension programmes are prime determinants of retirement particularly eligibility conditions and potential substitution between exit routes and that dynamic aspects are relevant for understanding retirement behaviour copyright 2004 john wiley sons ltd

the impact of stricter criteria for disability insurance on labor force participation this paper studies the effect of a large scale policy change in the austrian disability insurance program which tightened eligibility criteria for men above a certain age using administrative data on the universe of austrian private sector employees the results of difference in difference regressions suggest a substantial and statistically significant decline in disability enrollment of 6 to 7 4 percentage points and an increase in employment of 1 6 to 3 4 percentage points the policy change had important spillover effects into the unemployment and sickness insurance program specifically the share of individuals receiving unemployment benefits increased by 3 5 to 3 9 percentage points and the share receiving sickness insurance benefits by roughly 0 7 percentage points

disability insurance benefits and labor supply some additional evidence this article examines the effects of a change in the canada quebec pension plan c qpp disability benefits on the labor supply of older canadian workers i obtain my estimates by exploiting a large increase in benefits that only occurred in the qpp program which only operates in quebec while benefits in the cpp program which operates in the rest of canada were unaffected unlike the existing estimates from the united states as well as earlier canadian obtained by gruber i find that disability benefits are not associated with a large increase in the nonparticipation of older men

do gasoline demand elasticities vary this paper answers questions concerning gasoline demand elasticity by analyzing periods that span both increasing and decreasing prices focusing on consumer decisions about the distance driven and the automobile size us data show that efficiency changes and reduced mileages account equally for short run elasticities while automobile efficiency accounts for 90 in the long run the analysis shows a consistency that makes it useful in projecting elasticities during market disruptions and over a broad span of economic conditions in other countries 38 references dck

diagnosing measurement equivalence in cross national research many researchers have pointed out that it is necessary to ensure measurement equivalence in cross national comparative research three aspects of measurement equivalence translation metric and calibration equivalence are necessary to establish the cross national reliability and validity of items used to measure theoretical constructs this paper discusses these issues and proposes two recently developed empirical techniques multiple group lisrel and optimal scaling for use in diagnosing cross national measurement equivalence these techniques are illustrated by reanalysis of a pioneering u s and japanese study the two techniques yield convergent results indicating measurement equivalence for some but not all ordinal level items under consideration the findings demonstrate that the proposed methods are useful diagnostic tools for exploring measurement equivalence several suggestions for reducing the likelihood of problems with measurement equivalence and a number of methods for dealing with items where lack of equivalence persists are also discussed

benefit duration and unemployment entry a quasi experiment in austria apart from being an important aspect of job search behavior of individuals potential bene t duration can also have e2ects on unemployment entry rates in this paper the causal connection between the two is investigated for the case of austria using a quasi experimental situation that arose following the enactment of a law that extended bene t duration for older workers in speci c regions of the country unemployment entry is found to have risen between 4 and 11 percentage points due to the new law several robustness checks are presented to see if a causal interpretation of this result is possible preliminary analysis shows that this increase in unemployment entry can be best understood not as voluntary quits but layo2s by rms who want to get rid of high tenured and expensive older workers c

entrepreneurship and human development a capability approach abstract we provide a formal model of entrepreneurship in human development the framework is provided by the capabilities approach ca hence we extend not only the conceptualisation of entrepreneurship in development but the reach of the ca into entrepreneurship from a ca view entrepreneurship is not only a production factor or a means to an end as is often taken to be the case by economists but also an end in itself entrepreneurship can be a human functioning and can contribute towards expanding the set of human capabilities through being both a resource and a process our model shows however that entrepreneurship is not automatically a functioning where it is a necessity it stops being a valued functioning the model also shows that even when entrepreneurship is valued entrepreneurs may often not match their ideas with suitable opportunities policy implications are discussed

the correlates of entrepreneurship in three types of firms the objective of the research was to discover the chief determinants of entrepreneurship the process by which organizations renew themselves and their markets by pioneering innovation and risk taking some authors have argued that personality factors of the leader are what determine entrepreneurship others have highlighted the role played by the structure of the organization while a final group have pointed to the importance of strategy making we believed that the manner and extent to which entrepreneurship would be influenced by all of these factors would in large measure depend upon the nature of the organization based upon the work of a number of authors we derived a crude typology of firms simple firms are small and their power is centralized at the top planning firms are bigger their goal being smooth and efficient operation through the use of formal controls and plans organic firms strive to be adaptive to their environments emphasizing expertise based power and open communications the predictiveness of the typology was established upon a sample of 52 firms using hypothesis testing and analysis of variance techniques we conjectured that in simple firms entrepreneurship would be determined by the characteristics of the leader in planning firms it would be facilitated by explicit and well integrated product market strategies and in organic firms it would be a function of environment and structure these hypotheses were largely borne out by correlational and multiple regression analyses any programs which aim to stimulate entrepreneurship would benefit greatly from tailoring recommendations to the nature of the target firms

residential energy demand additional empirical evidence by minority household type abstract in a number of recent studies household level data for specific urban areas or national household level micro data have been used to estimate price and income elasticities of energy demand none of this literature however provides us with elasticity estimates by minority majority household type the main focus of this paper is to measure the responsiveness of the quantity of electricity and total energy demanded for black hispanis and majority households to price and income price and income elasticities are compared among these groups over the short and long term a variable elasticity demand model is estimated the elasticities are allowed to vary with respect to non price and income variables the price elasticities of demand vary with heating and cooling degree days and the income elasticities with the number of household members mean estimates were calculated over the respective samples findings indicate that demand for electricity is relatively price inelastic irrespective of household group however blacks are more sensitive to variations in the short run to price than hispanic and majority households in the long run blacks are also more sensitive to price changes but the magnitude of the response to price changes in the long run relative to the short run is larger for hispanics and majority households respectively than for blacks

residential demand for electricity the case of greece this paper examines the determinants of residential electricity consumption in greece over the period 1961 86 the paper presents first a brief description of the evolution of residential electricity consumption then it proceeds in the estimation of elasticities of residential demand for electricity using a single equation model with the ridge regression method the paper concludes that i the residential demand for electricity is price inelastic and income elastic ii there is high substitutability between electricity and lpg iii during the examined period the number of consumers played a very important role in the expansion of electricity consumption in greece and iv there is no regional variation in residential electricity demand

aching to retire the rise in the full retirement age and its impact on the social security disability rolls abstract the social security amendments of 1983 reduced the generosity of social security retired worker benefits in the u s by increasing the program s full retirement age from 65 to 67 and increasing the penalty for claiming benefits at the early retirement age of 62 these changes were phased in gradually so that individuals born in or before 1937 were unaffected and those born in 1960 or later were fully affected no corresponding changes were made to the program s disabled worker benefits and thus the relative generosity of social security disability insurance ssdi benefits increased in this paper we investigate the effect of the amendments on ssdi enrollment by exploiting variation across birth cohorts in the policy induced reduction in the present value of retired worker benefits our findings indicate that the amendments significantly increased ssdi enrollment since 1983 with an additional 0 6 of men and 0 9 of women between the ages of 45 and 64 receiving ssdi benefits in 2005 as a result of the changes our results further indicate that these effects will continue to increase during the next two decades as those fully exposed to the reduction in retirement benefit generosity reach their fifties and early sixties

intrapreneurship construct refinement and cross cultural validation abstract intrapreneurship entrepreneurship within existing organizations has been of interest to scholars and practitioners for the past two decades intrapreneurship is viewed as being beneficial for revitalization and performance of corporations as well as for small and medium sized enterprises the concept has four distinct dimensions first the new business venturing dimension refers to pursuing and entering new businesses related to the firm s current products or markets second the innovativeness dimension refers to the creation of new products services and technologies third the self renewal dimension emphasizes the strategy reformulation reorganization and organizational change finally the proactiveness dimension reflects top management orientation in pursuing enhanced competitiveness and includes initiative and risk taking and competitive aggressiveness and boldness while differing somewhat in their emphasis activities and orientations the four dimensions pertain to the same concept of intrapreneurship because they are factors of schumpeterian innovation the building block of entrepreneurship the pursuit of creative or new solutions to challenges confronting the firm including the development or enhancement of old and new products and services markets administrative techniques and technologies for performing organizational functions e g production marketing sales and distribution as well as changes in strategy organizing and dealings with competitors are innovations in the broadest sense intrapreneurship theory and measures have an american basis while being considered universal their generalizability has been limited because their cross cultural testing has been extremely limited two main measures of intrapreneurship the entrescale and the corporate entrepreneurship scale were developed independently but lack validity for cross national comparisons and do not tap all four dimensions of intrapreneurship when used independently in order to fill the gaps in previous research these two scales are integrated into a four dimensional measure of intrapreneurship refinement and validation was done by using two samples from two distinct economies slovenia a small transition economy from central and eastern europe with a short entrepreneurship tradition and the united states a large developed and advanced economy that is a leader in entrepreneurship research and practice the refined multidimensional measure of intrapreneurship was developed to be cross culturally generalizable because its refined dimensions scales include only cross culturally comparable items the refined intrapreneurship construct measure showed reasonably good convergent and discriminant validity as well as good nomological validity in terms of expected positive relationships to its antecedents organizational and environmental characteristics and consequences growth and profitability across the two samples that included large medium sized and smaller firms from a variety of different industries manufacturing consumer and industrial goods consumer and business services trade and construction in addition to the generalizability of the refined intrapreneurship construct measure the results of this study support the notion that intrapreneurship is an important predictor of firm growth in terms of absolute growth growth in number of employees and in total sales and relative growth growth in market share in comparison to competition firms that nurture organizational structures and values conducive to intrapreneurial activities are more likely to grow than organizations that are low in such characteristics open and quality communication existence of formal controls intensive environmental scanning management support organizational support and values all help an organization become more intrapreneurial intrapreneurial organizations are those that engage in new business venturing are innovative continuously renew themselves and are proactive in transition economies which are adapting their economies to more developed economies standards of doing business and where growth may not yet be the primary goal intrapreneurship may be even more important for the growth and profitability of existing organizations

entrepreneurial personalities in political leadership societies around the globe respond to the contemporary technological and economic change by defining entrepreneurship and innovation as core principles for future competitive advantage does this rise of the entrepreneurial society also imply that entrepreneurial personalities are becoming increasingly widespread and powerful in political leadership joseph a schumpeter already argued that highly influential entrepreneurs are unique and show a certain personality pattern that can be described as being not only high in creativity and change orientation but also high in competitiveness and rule breaking it is interesting to ask whether such schumpeterian personalities indeed play an increasingly important role in political leadership given that daily routines of policy leaders at least at first glance usually require rather non entrepreneurial strategies such as careful risk averse diplomacy to address this question we first survey the existing literature on personality and political leadership we further present a novel personality analysis of an influential business leader that recently made a transition to political leadership donald j trump the incumbent us president employing a language based computerized method of analyzing twitter statements we compare his online personality to the online personality of other influential entrepreneurs and business managers who do not engage in political leadership the results indicate that trump is indeed distinct in that he shows stronger features of a schumpeterian personality however he is also comparatively high in neuroticism we discuss these findings focusing on the potential implications of a concentration of entrepreneurial mindsets in political leadership

labor supply effects of the recent social security benefit cuts empirical estimates using cohort discontinuities abstract in response to a crisis in social security financing two decades ago congress implemented an increase in the normal retirement age nra of 2 months per year for cohorts born in 1938 and after these cohorts began reaching retirement age in 2000 this paper studies the effects of these benefit cuts on recent retirement behavior the evidence suggests that the mean retirement age of the affected cohorts has increased by about half as much as the increase in the nra if older workers continue to increase their labor supply in the same way there might be important implications for the estimates of social security trust fund exhaustion that have played such a major role in recent discussions of social security reform

cross cultural reliability and validity of a scale to measure firm entrepreneurial orientation abstract this study presents a foreign language version of a popular scale for measuring entrepreneurship and tests the instrument s utility in cross cultural settings as a means of validating it for use abroad entrepreneurship refers to the pursuit of creative or novel solutions to challenges confronting the firm including the development or enhancement of products and services as well as new administrative techniques and technologies for performing organizational functions entrepreneurship is a fundamental posture instrumentally important to strategic innovation particularly under shifting conditions in the firm s external environment and is applicable to any firm regardless of its size and type scholars note that entrepreneurial activity is critical because it stimulates superior performance and may well be the key fundamental element in the procurement of advantages relative to competitors researchers have developed a popular scale for measuring entrepreneurship at the firm level which has been found to be highly valid and reliable this scale the entrescale examines eight items reflecting the innovative and proactive disposition of management at a given firm however as the entrescale s measurement properties have never been comprehensively assessed in a cross cultural setting the instrument lacks strong evidence of international validity and reliability accordingly the cross cultural correspondence between the entrescale and the construct it is supposed to measure is unknown as is the extent of its utility to international practitioners this situation reflects a problem common to measuring instruments developed in the united states and is particularly troublesome for scales intended to measure foreign phenomena of interest in international business the researcher who assumes that a scale developed at home will function with equal efficacy abroad is most likely asking for trouble there is a risk that such assumptions will lead to invalid inferences an outcome potentially disastrous for the practitioner seeking to design appropriate strategies for international success sound measures of entrepreneurship are especially critical for managers attempting to understand the construct s cultural dynamic at both the organizational and country levels within subsidiaries agencies and other such entities presently representing or offering to represent the firm s interests abroad by understanding the entrepreneurial dynamic in foreign settings the multinational firm may be able to structure operations in ways that better suit existing local conditions and thereby avoid potentially adverse consequences further it is useful to discern by means of national studies the entrepreneurial characteristics of management at firms including existing or potential competitors across entire countries as a means of addressing this issue this study seeks to test the measurement properties of the entrescale using samples of english and french speaking managers results indicate that the scale performs well in terms of both reliability and validity and possesses a unique factor structure in concrete terms this implies that the entrescale is suitable for measuring the entrepreneurship construct abroad it is hoped that these results will 1 contribute to improving future research endeavors of scholars studying the role of entrepreneurship in the increasingly global environment of business 2 provide practitioners with a scale that can be used to measure the extent of entrepreneurial orientation among main operations subsidiaries and potential partner firms in foreign lands and 3 raise the standard by which measuring instruments are designed and used for research in cross cultural contexts

measurement issues in cross national research substantive inference from cross national studies have important implications for theory e g because they reveal insights into generalizability and boundary conditions and managerial practice e g because they offer guidelines to mnc managers however few empirical studies attend to measurement issues involved in cross national research and still fewer recognize the risk of inferential errors that are likely to occur by overlooking measurement issues we discuss four measurement issues namely 1 standardized versus unstandardized coefficients 2 the impact of measurement error and unequal reliability 3 the overall error rate and simultaneous analysis and 4 construct equivalence using illustrate examples we demonstrate the nature of each of these problems the likely impact they can have on substantive conclusions and approaches for tackling these problems additionally we reanalyze a recently published three nation study by dubinsky michaels kotabe lim and moon 1992 to clarify these measurement concerns highlight a methodological approach and delineate the extent and severity of inferential errors our reanalysis shows that the interactive effects of these measurement issues are pervasive complex and unpredictable we close with implications for cross national research in general

the effect of unemployment compensation on unemployment duration in germany in west germany during the 1980s law changes cut the level of unemployment compensation for the unemployed without children and extended the duration of unemployment insurance for unemployed aged over 41 analysis of these changes using the german socioeconomic panel shows that transitions from unemployment for those under 49 were particularly responsive to extensions of unemployment insurance the implied elasticity for escapes of men to employment is similar to estimates for men in the united states suggesting that differences in the potential duration of unemployment insurance only partially explain the difference in spell lengths between germany and the united states

entrepreneurs creativity and firm innovation the moderating role of entrepreneurial self efficacy there are several studies in entrepreneurship investigating determinants of innovation outcomes in smes although entrepreneurs entrepreneurial creativity is often seen as a prerequisite previous research indicates it is not an exclusive determinant of innovation we use theoretical logics of social cognitive theory and innovation theory to develop a conceptual model of entrepreneur s creativity self efficacy and innovation outcomes the model is then tested on a large sample of small and medium firms from two distinct economies the united states and slovenia empirical findings partially support the proposed moderation effects of entrepreneurial self efficacy but with the same variations between countries the implications of these results in relation to entrepreneurship theory and practice are discussed