liquidity risk and occupational choices we explore which financial constraints matter the most in the choice of becoming an entrepreneur we consider a randomly assigned welfare program in rural mexico and show that cash transfers signi cantly increase entry into entrepreneurship we then exploit the cross household variation in the timing of these transfers and find that current occupational choices are significantly more responsive to the transfers expected for the future than to those currently received guided by a simple occupational choice model we argue that the program has promoted entrepreneurship by enhancing the willingness to bear risk as opposed to simply relaxing current liquidity constraints

an empirical analysis of self employment in the u k the paper formulates a self employment paid employment choice problem that draws upon knight s notion that the individual responds to the risk adjusted relative earnings opportunities in each sector based on a development of such choice theoretic considerations an econometric model is developed with the purpose of empirically examining the determinants of self employment the model features simultaneous determination of employment status and earnings which allows for self selectivity the model is estimated using a sample of 4762 individuals from the general household survey for 1978 the estimation of the earnings equation enables a calculation of the self employment paid employment earnings differential and the estimated probit equation for self employment paid employment status facilitates the prediction of the probability of self employment the paper finds that there is positive selection bias in the observed earnings of employees that the probability of self employment depends positively on the earnings difference between the two sectors and that education and age are significant determinants of self employment

women s work and economic development using a cross country dataset and microdata from india and thailand we examine how women s work status changes with economic development several clear patterns emerge women s labor force participation first declines and then rises with development women move from work in family enterprises to work as paid employees fertility declines and gender gaps in education narrow women s education levels and those of their spouses appear to be important determinants of women s labor market activities broad welfare indicators such as mortality rates and education levels indicate that women s well being improves on average with development both in absolute terms and relative to men

agricultural household models extensions applications and policy this book presents the basic model of an agricultural household that underlies most of the case studies undertaken so far the model assumes that households are price takers and is therefore recursive the decisions modeled include those affecting production and the demand for inputs and those affecting consumption and the supply of labor comparative results on selected elasticities are presented for a number of economies the empirical significance of the approach is demonstrated in a comparison of models that treat production and consumption decisions separately and those in which the decisionmaking process is recursive the book summarizes the implications of agricultural pricing policy for the welfare of farm households marketed surplus the demand for nonagricultural goods and services the rural labor market budget revenues and foreign exchange earnings in addition it is shown that the basic model can be extended in order to explore the effects of government policy on crop composition nutritional status health saving and investment and to provide a more comprehensive analysis of the effects on budget revenues and foreign exchange earnings methodological topics primarily the data requirements of the basic model and its extensions along with aggregation market interaction uncertainty and market imperfections are discussed the most important methodological issues the question of the recursive property of these models is also discussed

gender discrimination entrepreneurial talent and self employment the trend of female self employment in italy is stable with a low level of participation which confirms the prediction of economic theory on discrimination we contend that gender discrimination alters the distribution of entrepreneurial talent between employees and self employed workers this gives rise to the prediction that the self employed women are less likely to survive when self employed than men because the lesser entrepreneurial talent of women will increase their risk of failure applying markovian analysis to istat s labor market transition matrices we verify this prediction many women try to set up on their own but they fail to remain self employed both because their lesser entrepreneurial talent and because they try to become entrepreneurs without any previous experience of work if you think you re so discriminated against why don t you set up on your own

caveat emptor cross country data on education and the labor force abstract cross country data on education and the labor force frequently are used to describe important dimensions of development and to estimate models of economic growth and growth determinants the impact of education and related phenomena this investigation finds 1 there are serious intertemporal and inter country comparability problems with these data that may importantly affect inferences about labor force size trends and productivity and schooling investments and impact 2 data gaps are systematically related to levels of development and literacy and 3 conclusions about the determinants or consequences of development based on constructed data that have been made available to fill data gaps can be seriously misleading

entrepreneurship developing countries and development economics new approaches and insights this paper provides an introduction to this special issue of small business economics dealing with the long postponed integration of entrepreneurship into the discipline of development economics and casting a formal light on the role of entrepreneurship in developing countries the paper departs from the premise that with more than a billion people living in absolute poverty it is of great practical importance to understand if and when entrepreneurship is a binding constraint on economic development and catching up in developing countries this in turn requires at least a deeper theoretical modeling of the entrepreneur in development economics this special edition contains a number of contributions emanating from the unu wider project on promoting entrepreneurial capacity which integrates the disciplines of entrepreneurship and development economics these contributions model and explore the role of the entrepreneur in key areas of concern for development economics such as structural change and economic growth income and wealth inequalities welfare poverty traps and market failures this introduction discusses and contextualizes these various contributions and their implications for further theoretical and empirical work

multivariate tests of the zero beta capm abstract a cross sectional regression test csrt of the capm is developed and its connection to the hotelling t2 test of multivariate statistical analysis is explored algebraic relations between the csrt the likehood ratio test and the langrange multiplier test are derived and a useful small sample bound on the distribution function of the csrt is obtained an application of the csrt suggests that the crsp equally weighted index is inefficient but that the inefficiency is not explained by a firm size effect from february to december

international stock market linkages evidence from the pre and post october 1987 period abstract this paper uses recent developments in the theory of cointegration to provide new methods of testing the linkage and dynamic interactions among stock market movements our findings are in sharp contrast with previous research which discovered strong interdependence among national stock markets prior to october 1987 for the post october 1987 period however our results show that the degree of international co movements among stock price indices has increased substantially with the nikkei index the only exception furthermore the us stock market is found to have a considerable impact on the french german and uk markets in the post crash period we also find the response of the french german and uk markets to us stock market innovations to be consistent with the view of cross border informationally efficient stock markets finally we find the japanese equity market performance to have no links with both the us stock market and the stock markets in france germany and uk during the pre and post october crash period

reward structures and the allocation of talent as relative rewards that different professions receive are a key factor in the allocation of talent what determines the reward structure of a society is an important question this paper develops an equilibrium model of the allocation of talent between productive and unproductive activities such as rent seeking the existence of rent seeking creates a negative externality on productive agents and implies that relative rewards are endogenously determined the same externality can also lead to the existence of multiple equilibria each with different reward structures in a dynamic setting allocations of past generations as well as expectations of future allocations influence current rewards and the society may get trapped in a rent seeking steady state equilibrium the paper also discusses how the non pecuniary reward structure can be influenced by equilibrium selection and a historical example that suggests the presence of a causal link from the allocation of talent to non pecuniary rewards

life satisfaction and self employment a matching approach despite lower incomes the self employed consistently report higher satisfaction with their jobs but are self employed individuals also happier more satisfied with their lives as a whole high job satisfaction might cause them to neglect other important domains of life such that the fulfilling job crowds out other pleasures leaving the individual on the whole not happier than others moreover self employment is often chosen to escape unemployment not for the associated autonomy that seems to account for the high job satisfaction we apply matching estimators that allow us to better take into account the above mentioned considerations and construct an appropriate control group in terms of balanced covariates using the bhps dataset that comprises a large nationally representative sample of the british populace we find that individuals who move from regular employment into self employment experience an increase in life satisfaction up to 2 years later while individuals moving from unemployment to self employment are not more satisfied than their counterparts moving from unemployment to regular employment we argue that these groups correspond to opportunity and necessity entrepreneurship respectively these findings are robust with regard to different measures of subjective well being as well as choice of matching variables and also robustness exercises involving simulated confounders

home based work and women s labor force decisions home based work differs from other employment because the work site is the home itself this difference means that the fixed costs of working at home are less than the fixed costs of working on site and that home based workers may engage in joint market and household production using data from the 1990 census we find that home based work is an attractive option for women for whom the fixed costs of work are high women who have small children are disabled or live in rural areas and that home based workers are more likely to choose self employment than are on site workers

using evidence of household income diversification to inform study of the rural nonfarm labor market in africa abstract the labor market literature in developing countries has seldom drawn on the studies of rural household income diversification this paper draws on such studies to inform future study of the rural nonfarm labor market in africa the review of evidence provides some surprising departures from traditional images of nonfarm activities of rural households among the most striking is the dominant importance in the majority of case study areas of nonfarm wage labor as compared to self employment of nonfarm sector earnings as compared to farm sector wage earnings and of local nonfarm earnings as compared to migration earnings the most worrying finding was the poor distribution of nonfarm earnings in rural areas despite the importance of these earnings to food security and farm investments this poor distribution implies significant entry barriers and market segmentation it is probable that this will lead over time to an increasingly skewed distribution of land and other assets in rural africa

the roots of entrepreneurship and labour demand individual ability and low risk aversion the topic of entrepreneurship currently experiences a revived interest as is shown by the research agenda of today s empirical researchers there are few issues in economics which are backed up by such a rich historical knowledge base as is the case with entrepreneurship this paper aims to give an overview of some important classic contributions relating to today s and tomorrow s empirical research subjects the overview consists of answers to six research questions by six historical contributors to entrepreneurship research together these questions give some insight into the determinants of successful entrepreneurship the classic contributors considered are cantillon say marshall schumpeter knight and kirzner their views are compared to each other as well as to some recent results of empirical research into the determinants of successful entrepreneurship

networks in entrepreneurship the case of high technology firms the value of networks as an integral part of the explanation of entrepreneurial success is widely acknowledged however the network perspective does not specify the role of networks in the emergence and early growth of a venture we have distinguished three entrepreneurial processes in new venture development i e discovery of opportunities securing resources and obtaining legitimacy which are of importance for survival and performance this paper examines how these processes are influenced by strong and or weak ties and whether the degree of innovation incremental versus radical acts as a contingency factor in the way network ties support entrepreneurial processes in this explorative study three cases on high technology firms in the netherlands provide empirical material enabling us to develop a number of propositions on the network effect in particular the mix of strong and weak ties on the three entrepreneurial processes

public private entanglement entrepreneurship in lebanon s hybrid political order while the literature is clear that political influence and clientelism characterises the investment decisions of entrepreneurs and the performance of their firms when governance is weak it is less understood how governance systems and entrepreneurs interact particularly when governance is of a hybrid nature we address this issue in this paper by studying how entrepreneurs obtain access to electricity in lebanon showing that the hybrid political order imposes a high cost on electricity we furthermore find that a hybrid political order channels entrepreneurial talent into lobbying and bribery the key constraint that emerges from the hybrid political order in this case is the corrupt organisation of governance of the electricity sector this results in higher prices because bribes for contracts have to be earned back in entrenchment of oligopolies because contracts often come with political protection

micro entrepreneurship and subjective well being evidence from rural bangladesh abstract microcredit has long been hailed as a powerful tool to promote livelihoods and reduce poverty through entrepreneurship however its impacts on people s subjective well being remain underexplored we present a unified theoretical framework for analyzing the effect of microcredit enabled entrepreneurship on overall life satisfaction a key manifestation of subjective well being empirically we apply an instrumental variable approach to a unique census like household survey conducted in three villages of bangladesh in 2013 in spite of having no direct effects we find that microcredit borrowing has an indirect negative effect on overall life satisfaction through increased worry on a positive note we find that female micro borrowers experience an increase in satisfaction with financial security and achievement in life we also provide evidence that micro borrowers with higher levels of assets experience an increase in satisfaction with financial security

the dual characteristics of closed end country funds the role of risk this article explores which of two hypotheses market segmentation or investor sentiment determines the behaviour of closed end country funds cecfs with the inclusion of risk factors the risk factors are proxied volatility as estimated with a bivariate markov switching autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity bswarch model which simultaneously includes foreign and us markets our findings are as follows on average a positive response is larger than a negative response in terms of absolute value and the market segmentation hypothesis with risk factors gains support in mexico where cecf returns are related to a market with low volatility but not to one with high volatility third the investor sentiment hypothesis which argues that cecf returns are not responsive to foreign markets is weakly supported in brazil the philippines indonesia and to a lesser degree in germany

the value of human and social capital investments for the business performance of startups we investigate the manifold posed question to what extent does investment in human and social capital besides the effect of talent enhance entrepreneurial performance we distinguish between three different performance measures survival profits and generated employment on the basis of the empirical analysis of a rich dutch longitudinal data set of firm founders we conclude that specific investments indeed affect the three performance measures substantially and significantly specific attention is paid to the unobserved talent bias moreover the effect of the emergence of so called knowledge industries is explored

portfolio performance evaluation old issues and new insights this article presents a model that provides insights about various measures of portfolio performance the model explores several criticisms of these measures these include the problem of identifying an appropriate benchmark portfolio the possibility of overestimating risk because of market timing ability and the failure of informed investors to earn positive risk adjusted returns because of increasing risk aversion the article argues that these need not be serious impediments to performance evaluation

international transmission of stock market movements this paper investigates the international transmission mechanism of stock market movements by estimating a nine market vector autoregression var system using simulated responses of the estimated var system we i locate all the main channels of interactions among national stock markets and ii trace out the dynamic responses of one market to innovations in another generally speaking a substantial amount of multi lateral interaction is detected among national stock markets innovations in the u s are rapidly transmitted to other markets in a clearly recognizable fashion whereas no single foreign market can significantly explain the u s market movements also the dynamic response pattern is found to be generally consistent with the notion of informationally efficient international stock markets

a comparison of the skewness of stock return distributions at earnings and non earnings announcement dates abstract this paper presents evidence that stock return prediction errors are less positively skewed in the time period surrounding accounting earnings report announcements than in a subsequent non announcement period assuming that information available about firms in non announcement periods depends on discretionary disclosure practices of firms and discretionary search for information by investors the results suggest that earnings reports cause more extreme bad news to be reflected in stock prices relative to discretionary sources of information

on the dual characteristics of closed end country funds abstract in a mildly segmented world market closed end country fund cecf returns and premiums or discounts would be determined by factors due mainly to market segmentation and investor sentiment the role of these two types of factors has been debated we reexamine this issue by examining the relative importance of us market returns and foreign market returns in determining cecf returns by employing time series empirical methods we find that cecf returns are more heavily influenced by their local foreign market returns than by us market returns which implies that there remains a substantial diversification benefit from investing in cecfs

diversification benefits and persistence of us based global bond funds abstract this paper examines diversification benefits and performance persistence of 188 us based global bond funds that survived and were defunct during the period of 1993 2004 consistent with managed fund literature global funds underperform broad based benchmark indexes however the underperformance is less than the funds expense ratio the results using both simple and time varying frameworks suggest that global funds provide higher total return and comparable risk adjusted return to domestic bond funds for us investors specializing in domestic bond funds global funds can enhance return by 0 5 1 per year without increasing risk global funds also provide incremental diversification benefits to equity fund investors the funds exhibit short run performance persistence but this is difficult for investors to exploit especially in long run global funds show no return seasonality during the sample period on a risk adjusted basis larger and newer funds and funds with long maturity and low expense ratio perform well

the pricing of emerging market country funds this paper provides an analysis of the equilibrium pricing of closed end country funds cecfs from emerging and nascent markets under the condition of segmented capital markets where an investment company acquires a set of eligible securities from the home country to form a cecf and issues shares to the residents of the host country the key findings are first a country fund will trade at its net asset value zero premium mimicking an open end status if the fund acquires as much of eligible securities as the differential substitution demand for them between the host and home country investors the differential substitution demand is shown to represent the equilibrium demand for eligible securities by the host country investors when they do not face supply restrictions second the fund will command a higher premium the more close a substitute the fund is for the market portfolio of the home country and the more risk averse the home country investors are collectively third the basic functional form of the fund premium is robust to the inclusion of freely tradable securities however the fund premium would additionally depend on the spanning ability of freely tradable securities

entrepreneurship and advancing national level economic efficiency we explore the channels under which entrepreneurship fosters productivity by disentangling its impact on national level economic efficiency and find that more entrepreneurship in aggregate is not always good for economic growth and most importantly identifying the form and activity of entrepreneurship is critical for policy makers to better manage changes in their economies our national level results also suggest that the new product entrepreneurship and to a lesser extent improvement driven opportunity entrepreneurship both significantly contribute to the improvement of national level efficiency however both measures would benefit from further development and it seems a higher coincidence of both is more likely to advance a nation s economic efficiency

international investment restrictions and closed end country fund prices some closed end country funds trade at large premiums relative to their net asset values this paper examines whether international investment restrictions raise country fund price net asset value ratios by segmenting international capital markets we test whether a relation exists between announcements of changes in investment restrictions and changes in these ratios using weekly data from may 1981 to january 1989 the results provide evidence that some foreign markets are at least partially segmented from the u s capital market

distributive justice corruption and entrepreneurial behavior this article introduces equity theory to the economic growth literature to examine whether a relationship exists between perceptions of distributive justice and the productivity of entrepreneurial behavior using survey responses from 317 entrepreneurs in india we find that productive entrepreneurship is positively related to distributive justice perceptions but negatively related to perceptions that corruption is pervasive in contrast nonproductive forms of entrepreneurship are negatively related to distributive justice but positively related to corruption unexpectedly the findings also show that corruption mediates the relationship between distributive justice and legal entrepreneurial behavior while distributive justice mediates the relationship between corruption and illegal entrepreneurial behavior we conclude with a discussion of the study s findings and their implications for entrepreneurship and economic growth

predator or prey parasitic enterprises in economic development abstract in many developing and transition economies mafia like activities are rampant extortion and other forms of predation lower profitability in private businesses and distort investment incentives incorporated in a model of industrialization bimodal club convergence may result economies may get stuck in a predators club characterized by a vicious cycle of poverty and predation societies with a low flow of new entrepreneurs are especially vulnerable to predation and never get out of this club poor societies with a high flow of new entrepreneurs however may grow out of the trap and join the rich producers club

gender agricultural production and the theory of the household virtually all models of the household assume that the allocation of resources is pareto efficient within many african households agricultural production occurs on many plots controlled by different members of the household pareto efficiency implies that factors should be allocated efficiently across these plots i find in contrast that plots controlled by women are farmed much less intensively than similar plots within the household controlled by men the estimates imply that about 6 percent of output is lost because of inefficient factor allocation within the household the paper suggests a new approach to modeling intrahousehold allocation consistent with the empirical results

surfeiting the appetite may sicken entrepreneurship and happiness do the presence and nature of entrepreneurship impact on national happiness and are nations with happy citizens better for entrepreneurs to start new businesses to provide tentative answers we survey the literature on entrepreneurship and subjective well being and use various data sources to uncover the first evidence of the relationship between entrepreneurship and happiness at the country level we find that opportunity motivated entrepreneurship may contribute to a nation s happiness but only to a certain point at which the effects of happiness begin to decline moreover our results suggest that a nation s happiness affects early stage opportunity driven entrepreneurial activity

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

nobody s business but my own self employment and small enterprise in economic development abstract in most poor countries small firms and self employment are the dominant forms of business enterprise even in the manufacturing sector for rich countries in contrast self employed people account for very small shares of manufacturing employment and output this paper builds on lucas 1978 on the size distribution of business firms bell journal of economics 9 2 508 523 to ask whether structural changes of this kind are driven by productivity differences a model calibrated to japanese time series data is shown to mimic key features of cross country and time series data the results support the idea that changes in aggregate productivity account for much of the cross country variation in establishment size and self employment rates

introduction to special issue of small business economics on female entrepreneurship in developed and developing economies research into entrepreneurship has for many years been interested in the differences in rate of participation and performance by female entrepreneurs the motivation for considering female entrepreneurship in both developing and developed countries arises from our increasing understanding of the significance of the role of women in creating running and growing businesses as a fundamental driver for economic growth this special issue examines the reasons for differences in gender participation across levels of development using empirical studies

grit and self employment a multi country study blending the literatures on grit and self employment we propose the role of grit in separating the self employed from the employed based on a sample of 13 210 respondents from nine countries our results indicate that not only is grit related to self employment but also grit is more strongly related to self employment for risk takers females and younger individuals the findings are robust controlling for several individual characteristics and alternate specifications and have implications for the broader literature on self employment

the multiperiod information content of accounting earnings confirmations and contradictions of previous earnings reports in this study we propose and test the hypothesis that investors reevaluate earnings announcements in the light of postannouncement information 1 our argument for multiperiod price reactions to earnings news is motivated by the literature linking price responses to earnings persistence 2 when earnings are announced we assume that investors are unable to determine with certainty the persistence of an earnings

how naive is the market s use of firm specific earnings information recent studies suggest the apparent delay in the stock price response to earnings announcements i e post earnings announcement drift is caused by investors who underestimate the autocorrelation of seasonally differenced earnings persistence i present results that suggest 1 a firm s future persistence is predictable on the basis of its past persistence 2 the immediate stock price response to earnings is positively related to historical persistence 3 post earnings announcement drift is independent of historical persistence and 4 consistent with 2 and 3 the difference between a firm s current observed persistence and that implied in stock prices is independent of its historical persistence these results extend prior research by demonstrating that investors are aware not only that seasonally differenced earnings are autocorrelated but that investors recognize firm specific differences in the magnitude of the autocorrelation

entrepreneurial intentions in the third age the impact of perceived age norms this article investigates the impact of perceived age norms on the formation of entrepreneurial intentions in the third age age norms refer to those social norms that determine whether establishing and running a business are considered appropriate behavior for a mature individual an empirical analysis of finnish individuals finds that norms perceived as permissive of enterprising activity in the third age exert a significant positive influence on entrepreneurial intentions in this segment even when controlling for the general level of entrepreneurship in the municipalities this influence is partially mediated by whether the individual has a positive attitude toward entrepreneurship by how the individual perceives their own ability to start and run a business by the extent of support from their family and friends they perceive and by the importance of that support to them thus if policy aims to increase enterprising activity in the third age segment the portfolio of instruments should include measures that address people s general awareness of third age entrepreneurship as a viable positive and attractive late career option

comparative advantage information and the allocation of workers to tasks evidence from an agricultural labour market we use data from an agricultural labour market in which workers receive both time and piece rate wages and shift frequently among employers and tasks to assess the roles of comparative advantage information problems and preferences in determining the allocation of workers the estimates which impose minimal structure not implied by economic theory are consistent with a one factor productivity model and indicate that information asymmetries are present but workers are sorted according to comparative advantage in particular the disproportionate presence of female workers in weeding activities is due not to worker or employer preferences but to comparative advantage and statistical discrimination

a random walk through the gibson paradox evidence to support the gibson paradox is often given in the form of a simple correlation between the nominal interest rate and the log of price level or in the form of a simple linear regression between these two variables authors then show using standard procedures of statistical inference that the price level possesses a significant coefficient we argue that this class of evidence is spurious since the nominal interest rate and the price level both integrated variables do not form a cointegrated system

the intrahousehold demand for nutrients in rural south india individual estimates fixed effects and permanent income good estimates of nutrient intake responses to prices and income are very useful for the evaluation of the numerous efforts to improve nutrition in many developing countries through pricesubsidy and income generation policies we discuss three problems in standard estimates of these responses and then illustrate their implications for nutrient demand relations for a poor sample from rural south india 1 intra household nutrient allocations usually are ignored in this case nutrient intakes for females systematically have algebraically lower price elasticities than do those for males which may leave the females particularly vulnerable at times of food shortages 2 unobserved fixed effects may bias the estimates of responses to observed variables in this case not only the community fixed effects on which the previous literature has focused but also household and individual fixed effects are important failure to control for them results in substantial algebraically upward biases in many estimated price responses 3 most previous studies use current instead of permanent income which a priori may account for the low estimated income elasticities in this case however the use of permanent income does not change the conclusion that the nutrient intakes responses to income are quite small

market opportunities genetic endowments and intrafamily resource distribution child survival in rural india the authors examine how intrafamily resource allocations respond to changes in economic conditions and to genetic differences in children by estimating the determinants of variations in the sex specific survival differentials of rural indian children based on standard census and household survey data they explore in particular the hypothesis that such differences are related to the relative returns to survival with households selectively allocating resources to children in response to variation in sex differences in their expected earnings opportunities as adults data are from the 1961 census and a 1971 household survey excerpt

international diversification through closed end country funds abstract the primary objectives of this paper are to assess the potential of closed end country funds cecfs as vehicles for achieving international diversification at home and to examine the effect of the closed end status of these funds on their investment characteristics the main findings are first cecfs exhibit significant exposure to the u s market factor and act more like u s securities than do their underlying assets second despite these characteristics cecfs retain significant exposure to their local home market factors and provide u s investors with substantial diversification benefits emerging market funds such as brazil mexico and taiwan receive large weights in optimal international portfolios comprised of cecfs implying that these funds can play a unique role in spanning the opportunity set for u s investors third performance evaluations indicate that our sample cecfs generally did not offer significant overseas alphas fourth fund value and net asset value are found to be co integrated for the majority of cecfs from north america and europe but not for those representing the asian emerging markets

using founder status age of firm and company growth rate as the basis for distinguishing entrepreneurs from managers of smaller businesses abstract this article examined the empirical implications of definitions that distinguish entrepreneurs from managers of smaller businesses based on their founder nonfounder status and their firms ages and growth rates the best distinctions were created using 1 founders 2 younger companies and 3 the combination of founders and younger companies growth indicators did not discriminate well the two founder based distinctions shared a profile of entrepreneurs as running smaller companies with higher return on assets roa than nonentrepreneurial managers having shorter tenure in their positions having previous work experience in the same industry and having higher risk taking propensity the distinction based on age of firm also showed strong ability to discriminate among respondents the field of entrepreneurship has few longer standing controversies than the one surrounding the question of what distinguishes entrepreneurs from nonentrepreneurial managers in trying to separate entrepreneurs from managers of smaller businesses in particular questions exist concerning the key defining differences definitions of entrepreneurship have utilized founder versus nonfounder status company age and company growth rates as distinguishing elements entrepreneurs have been defined by one or more of the following elements being a company founder running a young company and running or desiring to run a high growth company this article tests these elements to see if they provide a clearly differentiated profile of entrepreneurs it uses the founder nonfounder distinction for example to see if this distinction functions well in identifying a number of company financial and personal attributes that associate with founders rather than nonfounders the approach advocated here borrows from configurational theory as it has emerged in the fields of strategic management and organizational theory meyer tsui and hinings 1993 to look for a constellation of variables that group together in depicting entrepreneurs if founder status company age and growth rate are useful definitions of entrepreneurship they should point to a configuration of factors that together comprise a profile of an entrepreneur in predicting what configuration of factors will emerge this article adopts a strategic adaptation perspective low and macmillan 1988 to argue that differences between entrepreneurs and nonentrepreneurs spring from divergent thought processes and personal attributes of individuals who face the question of whether and how to enter business for themselves using the founder nonfounder distinction we view individuals who decide to start a new business rather than buy or manage an existing one as more likely to have previously founded a business have experience in the same industry be higher in risk taking show more type a behavior and be more growth oriented findings from a sample of ceos in the smaller business association of new england indicated that neither of the two tests based on high growth as a definition of entrepreneurial firms proved adept at creating a distinct entrepreneurial profile distinctions based on founder status younger firm status and founder of a younger firm status on the other hand proved effective in creating such profiles dimensions shared by the two founder based definitions of entrepreneurship included company attributes of smaller size and higher roa and ceo attributes of shorter tenure on the job previous experience in the same industry and higher risk taking propensity additional attributes showed in the younger company founder group including company attributes of lower liquidity and higher sales growth and personal attributes of having previously founded a business ranking roa as a high priority and external locus of control the distinction based on younger firm status performed well in discriminating among respondents in this study in addition to sharing several variables with the founder based distinctions it alone identified younger firms ceos as having lower education and type a tendencies and higher expectations of children succeeding them in the business as one implication of these findings knowledge of the profiles may help people who deal with these groups to have a better sense of how to interact with and respond to them the young company founder profile for example presents a picture of a relatively small company experiencing high rates of sales growth squeezing all it can from its assets in the face of high comparative liabilities because the company is young its founder has relatively short tenure but may well have had previous experience in the industry and have previously founded a company personally the founder is a risk taker who is external in locus of control and places high priority on roa if this configuration holds firm in future research those who deal frequently with entrepreneurs such as bankers venture capitalists consultants accountants and lawyers will be able to use a few identifying factors such as founder status and age of firm to draw reasonable inferences about a host of other characteristics of their clients the attempt to profile the entrepreneur in recent years thought to be futile may yet prove viable

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