state fiscal institutions and empty nest migration are tiebout voters hobbled abstract using the health and retirement study and a national panel of local fiscal data we test a lifecycle model of tiebout sorting on average cross state empty nest movers presumed to be out of fiscal equilibrium experience large fiscal gains in the form of reduced exposure to local school spending and property taxes while local empty nest movers experience no fiscal adjustment we find evidence that within state fiscal adjustment is constrained by state institutions that limit local discretion empty nest households moving within states with school finance equalization do not engage in tiebout consistent fiscal adjustment while those moving within states lacking school finance equalization adjust substantially

state aid programs for equalizing spending across local school districts does the structure of the program matter or only it s size this paper provides interesting insights into an important causal mechanism underlying murray evans and schwab s am econ rev 88 4 789 812 1998 finding that court mandated reforms result in less inequality in spending per pupil levels across rich and poor school districts within a state treating the choice of an education program s structure as endogenous following the analysis of leyden public finance finances publiques 47 229 247 1992 public choice 115 1 2 83 107 2003 yields empirical results suggesting that court mandated reforms increase the likelihood that a program s structure will include a price effect and that the inclusion of a price effect in turn results in a decrease in spending inequality

data watch research data in the economics of education economists have developed a wide variety of policy relevant empirical research projects that address the role of education in promoting individual and social welfare recent examples include studies on the impact of school spending on educational outputs the differences between public and private schools the effects of competition among schools the determinants of teacher quality the impact of unions on schools and the consequences of education finance reform one reason for the proliferation of such empirical studies has been the emergence of high quality micro level data on education in this paper we discuss three broad types of data sets data on educational institutions data on educational outcomes at the individual level and data sets from school reforms and experiments in each section we summarize some of the leading surveys discuss the general availability of the data and identify some but certainly not all of the research that has utilized these data this review is by no means exhaustive we have restricted our attention to analyses of data sets describing primary and secondary education moreover we emphasize data sets that are excellent sources of information but are less wellknown and utilized by economists in particular two obvious omissions from this review are the national longitudinal survey of youth nlsy and the panel study of income dynamics psid both are broad based studies that track people over periods of time gathering information both on educational attainment and on many other issues as well

human capital accumulation in a federation abstract more than half of the variation across u s school districts in real k 12 education expenditures per student is due to differences between rather than within states i study the welfare implications of redistribution of education expenditures by the federal government using an analytically tractable model of human capital accumulation with heterogeneous agents and endogenous state policies the net welfare effect of federal redistribution depends on a trade off between the positive effect of redistributing resources toward poorer states and the negative effect resulting from misallocation of population across states federal redistribution increases welfare in a calibrated version of the model

technology strategy and financial performance examining the moderating role of the firm s competitive environment abstract success in today s competitive environment requires a company to pursue a coherent technology strategy to articulate its plans to develop acquire and deploy technological resources to achieve superior financial performance this strategy clarifies the company s choices on being a technological pioneer or a follower the breadth of the technology product and process portfolios amounts of investments in internal r d and external sources of technology and levels of technological forecasting to be performed in turn these choices require making decisions on the basic and applied r d to be conduced the intended offensive or defensive uses of the technology and emphasis on incremental and radical r d to date however few studies have attempted to document the collective implications of a company s technological choices for its financial performance in response data from 176 manufacturing companies were used to examine the association between a company s technology strategy and its financial performance and to explore the moderating effect of the environment on the technology strategy performance link therefore the study focused on a company s perceptions of environmental dynamism hostility and heterogeneity dynamism indicated the perceived continuity of changes in an industry hostility referred to the changes in the industry that could adversely impact the firm s operations and performance heterogeneity meant that the environment encompassed many segments with different needs the study developed and empirically tested the following hypotheses 1 h1a pioneering will be highest among firms whose environments are highly dynamic moderately hostile and moderately heterogeneous 2 h1b followership will be highest among firms whose environments are highly hostile and moderately dynamic but low in heterogeneity 3 h2a radical product technologies will be pursued most by firms whose environments are highly dynamic moderately hostile and moderately heterogeneous 4 h2b radical process technologies will be pursued most by firms whose environments are moderately dynamic moderately hostile and moderately heterogeneous 5 h2c incremental product and process technologies will be pursued most by firms whose environments are stable low dynamism benign low hostility and highly heterogeneous 6 h3 the broadest technological portfolios will exist among firms whose environments are characterized by moderate dynamism high heterogeneity and moderate or low hostility 7 h4 r d spending will be highest among firms whose environments are highly dynamic highly heterogeneous and highly benign low in hostility 8 h5 the use of external technology sources will be highest among firms whose environments are highly dynamic highly hostile and highly heterogeneous 9 h6 emphasis on technological forecasting will be highest among firms whose environments are highly dynamic highly hostile and highly heterogeneous 10 h7 the environment is a quasi moderator of the technology strategy performance relationship the results supported the study s hypotheses except h2c and h3 and suggested five ideas for managerial action 1 executives should develop and use a comprehensive technology strategy to ensure that their company achieves superior financial performance 2 executives should be cautious in applying generic prescriptions of how to utilize technological resources to achieve profitability because the financial payoff from technology strategy variables varies from one environment to the other instead executives should examine their company s goals capacity to manage diverse product and process initiatives risk taking orientation resources and the environment 3 attention to developing and using process technology innovation is necessary for success in fact a broad process innovation portfolio is positively associated with return on assets in the overall sample and in three of the study s five clusters 4 managers need to adopt a long term perspective in making r d investments where patient investments over several years are the norm increasing r d spending should not be viewed as a quick fix for the company s poor competitive position 5 whereas the external sources of technology can improve the company s performance managers should identify the conditions under which external sources can be used and educate their employees on the growing importance of these technologies for achieving profitability

toward a contingency framework of export entrepreneurship conceptualisations and empirical evidence this paper reports the findings of a study which employed a contingency export entrepreneurial approach to investigate the critical influences on export venture creation among a sample of nigerian small firms responding to the repeated calls in the literature for multi disciplinary research frameworks the paper draws on perspectives from entrepreneurship exporting and contingency literatures to examine the antecedent and moderating influences on the export behavior of small firms it explores in particular the effect of entrepreneurial orientation and external environmental moderators in the export venture creation process of small firms the findings suggest that an entrepreneurial orientation is associated with better export venturing and is the appropriate strategic posture for small firms operating in hostile environments it would appear also that this orientation is associated with certain decision maker characteristics including international orientation and contacts and previous business experience and firm level competencies by thus highlighting the entrepreneurial dimensions of export venturing this paper makes the case for greater policy focus on strengthening the entrepreneurial foundations capacities of small firms

innovative and noninnovative small firms types and characteristics this study addresses the proposition that the characteristics of innovative and noninnovative small firms have significant differences it is based on a sample of 50 texas manufacturers cluster analysis yielded five distinct groups two innovative and three noninnovative the two innovative groups were either young firms dubbed the young turks or established managerially competent firms headed by newcomers called the blue chips among the three noninnovative groups the silver spoons appeared to be surviving on past success the striving stoics displayed continuing managerial effort but were led by executives who had been at the helm far longer than average and the kismets showed lesser competence and effort were highly centralized and were headed by executives tending more towards an external locus of control correlational analysis indicated a significant positive relationship between scanning and innovation challenges to the firm in the form of environmental dynamism and heterogeneity evoked positive innovatory responses but environmental hostility was a weak negative correlate inducing the firm to pull in its horns finally an abundance of resources encouraged proactiveness

models for distinguishing innovative and noninnovative small firms the importance of innovation is underscored by the fact that some authors blame u s industry s competitive decline on the excessively short term focus of managers as opposed to longer term innovative product or process development at the same time the contribution of small firms to research and innovation continues to rise thus from 1945 to 1980 they introduced an average 48 share of innovations a figure that rose to 56 for the 1980 1985 period this article studies innovation in small manufacturing firms in texas the study sample was drawn from the 1985 directory of texas manufacturers and covered sic codes 34 39 these include metal fabrication nonelectrical machinery electrical and electronic machinery transportation equipment instrumentation and miscellaneous manufacturing a total of 50 usable responses were received of which the ceo was the responding executive in 38 prior literature on innovation provided the relevant variables in broad groupings these covered strategy structure function environment the firm and the responding executive plus his role in innovation product differentiation and risk taking were also included each broad group often consisted of several variables for example the environment grouping comprised dynamism heterogeneity and hostility in all there were 31 independent variables their data values were based on either the responses to individual questions or the means of responses to groups of questions the dependent variable product service innovation averaged the responses to questions on technological leadership and quantity and quality of innovations a stepwise regression procedure yields an eight variable model with an r2 of 0 66 a runs test on the residuals confirms the randomness of errors the computed discriminant function classifies the sample firms correctly in 43 of 50 cases while the modeling process is successful the models have not been retested on fresh data because of the small sample and so the caveat of sample specificity remains the recurring variables in the two models are integrated decision making environmental heterogeneity percentage of research expenditure to cost of goods sold and the responding executive s role in technical development of innovations for the latter the answer seems to be that less is more or hands off is best the coefficients for the others are all positive for investors or lenders the consequence of being able to evaluate the innovative potential of small firms is likely to attenuate the risk secondarily it is also likely to enhance the efficient allocation of resources the data obtained lacked sufficient variation in structural variables like centralization the sample firms tended to be centralized thus future research exploring centralization and its effect on innovation in small firms would be most interesting particularly as prior results are somewhat ambiguous

are professional basketball players reference dependent abstractmodels with reference dependent preferences suggest that agents exert considerable effort to avoid falling below a reference point and losing we provide visual and statistical evidence that player performances in the national basketball association nba bunch at salient normatively extraneous round numbers using data on nearly three million shot attempts with precise x y coordinates we find that players improve free throw accuracy and attempt shots closer to the hoop when shooting for a round number the results are strongest for players on home teams suggesting that the reference dependent enters preferences through an external social evaluation channel

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

inefficiencies from metropolitan political and fiscal decentralization failures of tiebout competition we examine the welfare effects of provision of local public goods in an empirically relevant setting using a multi community model with mobile and heterogeneous households and with flexible housing supplies we characterize the first best allocation and show efficiency can be implemented with decentralization using head taxes we calibrate the model and compare welfare in property tax equilibria both decentralized and centralized to the efficient allocation inefficiencies with decentralization and property taxation are large dissipating most if not all the potential welfare gains that efficient decentralization could achieve in property tax equilibrium centralization is frequently more efficient an externality in community choice underlies the failure to achieve efficiency with decentralization and property taxes poorer households crowd richer communities and free ride by consuming relatively little housing thereby avoiding taxes copyright oxford university press

international corporate entrepreneurship and firm performance the moderating effect of international environmental hostility abstract globalization of the world economy has encouraged u s companies to leverage their resources and skills by expanding into existing or new foreign markets u s companies have also acquired new capabilities by locating important functional activities overseas and joining with foreign partners in new markets through alliances and joint ventures these opportunities however are tempered by the constraints imposed by the competitive forces that exist in international environments aggressive government intervention technological changes and fierce local rivalries all contribute to hostile international environments for u s firms global expansion success in global business operations requires resourcefulness and entrepreneurial risk taking the activities of u s companies in foreign markets therefore provide a unique opportunity to examine the effects of international corporate entrepreneurship ice efforts on company performance ice is defined as the sum of a company s efforts aimed at innovation proactiveness and risk taking these efforts offer an important means of revitalizing and renewing established companies and improving their performance few studies have empirically examined the effects of ice activities on companies financial performance this study used data from 98 u s companies to 1 determine the impact of ice efforts on firm performance and 2 explore the moderating effect that the perceived hostility of the international environment has on the relationship between ice and company performance the results showed that ice was positively associated with a firm s overall profitability and growth as well as its foreign profitability and growth those firms that aggressively pursued ice in international environments with higher levels of hostility had higher return on assets roa but did not achieve significantly higher levels of growth however as hostility in the international environment continued to intensify roa rose and then fell as companies increased their ice activities thus there was a point of diminishing returns to a company s aggressive pursuit of ice under excessive environmental hostility the results highlight both the rewards and risks of pursuing ice companies benefit from ice activities by achieving higher overall performance as well as foreign profits and growth in revenue however the aggressive pursuit of ice does not always guarantee superior performance our results show that the payoff from ice is moderated by executives perceptions of the hostility of their firm s international business environment our findings highlight the importance of ice for organizational success both overall and in foreign markets yet the results compellingly suggest that there are upper limits to the potential gains a firm achieves from its aggressive pursuit of ice when the international environment in which it competes is hostile

pioneers and followers competitive tactics environment and firm growth abstract market pioneering where a firm is first to offer a distinctively new product to the market is a commonly recognized form of corporate entrepreneurship as with other forms of corporate entrepreneurship the linkage between market pioneering and firm performance has received limited empirical attention much of which has yielded inconsistent results nonetheless two conclusions regarding when and how pioneering relates to firm performance are revealed in the literature first theory and past research suggest that pioneering is an environment specific phenomenon that is certain types of environments may be most likely to encourage or reward the actions of pioneers while these same actions may meet with limited success in other environments second theory and past research suggest that firm performance is affected by the fit between a firm s pioneer follower status and its competitive tactics in other words market entry order moderates the effectiveness of a firm s competitive tactics such that certain tactics will be most effective when employed by market pioneers while other tactics will be most effective when employed by market followers considered jointly the preceding observations suggest that insights might be gained regarding the effective management of market pioneering and market following by seeking to understand a how these phenomena are manifested in different industry environments and b what pioneers and followers do differently in these environments to promote their performance the research described in this paper addresses these issues in particular this paper develops theory that describes how particular competitive tactics are thought to relate to firm sales growth rate among market pioneers and market followers in two distinct environmental settings hypotheses are developed based on the following research propositions p1 in hostile environments pioneers and followers will differentially benefit in achieving high sales growth rates from their reliance on relatively high prices relatively broad product lines relatively broad served geographical markets relatively advanced process technologies and relatively advantageous purchasing arrangements p2 in benign environments pioneers and followers will differentially benefit in achieving high sales growth rates from their reliance on relatively high quality products relatively strong product warranties relatively high advertising and promotion expenditures relatively strong control over distribution channels employed and relatively large numbers of distribution channels employed to test the hypothesized relationships data were collected from the senior managers of 103 independent nondiversified manufacturing firms operating in 75 industries cluster analysis anova and correlational analysis were employed as the principal analytical techniques the results suggest that market pioneers grow neither more nor less rapidly than market followers however in hostile environments pioneering may enable firms to break out of the dominant price based mode of competition and grow in spite of charging high prices this ability of pioneers to excel in hostile environments seems to be further facilitated by limiting product line breath to a small number of product offerings that provide a tight fit with market needs pioneers in hostile environments also appear to be relatively better served than followers from gaining a wide geographical distribution for their products followers in hostile environments on the other hand should seek to reduce their cost structures in order to effectively sustain low price strategies the employment of advanced process technologies and the pursuit of purchasing advantages were actions which proved to be more advantageous for followers than for pioneers in hostile environments the managerial implications of this research applicable to benign environment firms are quite different other things being equal relatively high prices may not be as detrimental to growth among followers in benign environments as they are among followers in more hostile environments benign environment followers may in fact be better off when they charge relatively high prices and compete on non price bases the results also suggest that in benign environments offering products with warranties superior to those of competitors may have a significantly more positive effect on sales growth among pioneers than followers moreover employing a large number of distribution channels appears to benefit pioneers more than followers however among the sampled firms benign environment pioneers that realized the greatest growth did not have extensive control over distribution channel members therefore benign environment pioneers may grow more quickly if they target their distribution related resources toward expanding their channels rather than toward controlling some smaller number these channels this study contributes to the pioneering literature by having corroborated several findings of the pims based studies regarding tactical differences between pioneers and followers and by having further documented the relevance of market entry order or pioneer follower status as a moderator of the performance associated with particular competitive tactics moreover by having examined the tactics performance relationships of pioneers and followers in two distinct environmental settings this study adds specificity and empirical support to the emerging theoretical paradigm that depicts pioneering as an environment specific phenomenon finally this study contributes to the literature on coping with hostility by having theorized about and empirically identified common and effective bases for competition under varying levels of environmental hostility

risks of corporate entrepreneurship autonomy and agency issues although research on corporate entrepreneurship ce has attracted increasing attention risks of ce are not well examined in this paper we examine direct and indirect agency risks associated with providing middle and operational managers with autonomy in the hopes of encouraging ce the key ideas behind our discussion involve two dilemmas of ce 1 to solve the risk averseness problem of middle and operational managers and unleash their entrepreneurial ideas top management needs to encourage autonomous behaviors which can also exacerbate a different type of agency problem opportunistic behaviors 2 although the generation of new ideas to explore new strategic directions and or opportunities is important the very newness of the ideas make them difficult to evaluate and thus the selection process may be perceived as unfair by some managers we propose that a stock options b passive monitoring and c perceived procedural justice would attenuate the negative side effects associated with ce such as opportunistic behaviors and perceived unfairness although research in ce often stresses autonomy of middle and operational managers for new idea generation as important examining the whole process in terms of idea generation selection and implementation with respect to potential risks will extend the ce literature

internationalisation conceptualising an entrepreneurial process of behaviour in time this paper presents a three stage process of conceptual development in response to the call for a unifying direction for research in the emergent field of international entrepreneurship drawing on classic approaches to internationalisation and importing insight from entrepreneurship as a separate and distinct field of study the paper develops three potential models of internationalisation as a time based process of entrepreneurial behaviour the models evolve from the simple through general to precise levels of conceptualisation research implications are discussed

lotteries litigation and education finance 1 introductionhistorically the finance of public education in the united states has been largely based on revenue raised locally through property taxation however this system has been routinely criticized on the grounds that the resulting distribution of educational opportunity is inequitable and that it may lead us to forgo socially productive investments in education over the past several decades these concerns have motivated extensive litigation in almost every state challenging the constitutionality of property based education finance to date the supreme courts in 17 of these states have encouraged increased state aid to school districts by concluding that their current systems of education finance were indeed unconstitutional however over this same period 37 states have also turned to new state lotteries as a way to increase state funding for services like education there are two shared reasons that these disparate approaches to directing new resources to education might prove to be ineffective first it is by no means clear that these reforms would actually increase state or local educational spending state legislatures may respond slowly if at all to a court ruling that encourages increased aid furthermore states that earmark new lottery revenues for education may simply choose to then reduce their education appropriations from other sources and even if these reforms do increase state aid the effect on educational spending may be undone by reductions in education revenues raised from local and federal sources 1 second even if new state aid were to increase local education spending it is not clear that these new resources would be allocated in ways that actually improved school quality the extensive though controversial literature on educational productivity suggests that new resources would not be used effectively e g burtless 1996 this study provides novel empirical evidence on these policy relevant concerns by examining the consequences of two of the most recent and noteworthy education finance reforms in 1993 tennessee began court ordered education finance reforms while the neighboring stale of georgia simultaneously initiated a lottery explicitly designed to promote educational spending these policy experiments are partly of interest simply because of their narrow consequences for the patterns of educational finance and spending within these states however they are also likely to be of more general interest because they provide evidence on a question of importance to policymakers and voters everywhere specifically the consequences of these reforms provide evidence on how plausibly exogenous increases in available educational resources are actually spent though there is an extensive literature on educational productivity there is surprisingly little evidence on how school districts allocate resources 2 furthermore these evaluations may also prove of more general interest because each of these states adopted rather unique and interesting strategies to earmark new state aid for specific educational expenditures in tennessee the court ordered education finance reforms were accompanied by broader educational reforms designed to ensure the efficacy of the new state aid these measures included accountability measures for schools and school districts based on controversial value added measures of student test performance the phasing in of mandatory class size regulations and a high profile initiative to promote technological investments in classrooms georgia also attempted to earmark new lottery revenues for specific educational spending by promising new and highly visible educational initiatives i e helping outstanding pupils educationally hope scholarships prekindergarten prek programs and technological investments for classrooms the absolute and comparative success of these earmarking attempts can provide evidence to other communities that hope to promote spending on specific educational functions

the rise of the states u s fiscal decentralization in the postwar period article i nfo article history one of the most dramatic changes in the fiscal federalism landscape during the postwar period has been the rapid growth in state budgets which almost tripled as a share of gdp and doubled as a share of government spending between 1952 and 2006 we argue that the greater role of states cannot be easily explained by changes in tiebout forces of fiscal competition such as mobility and voting patterns and are not accounted for by demographic or income trends rather we demonstrate that much of the growth in state budgets has been driven by changes in intergovernmental interactions restricted federal grants to states have increased and federal policy and legal constraints have also mandated or heavily incentivized state own source spending particularly in the areas of education health and public welfare these outside pressures moderate the forces of fiscal competition and must be taken into account when assessing the implications of observed revenue and spending patterns

generalising gibrat using chinese evidence founded on fieldwork this paper reports on determinants of small firm growth and survival using fieldwork evidence collected by face to face and telephone interviews it extends the basic size age model to a comprehensive growth model with two types of additional explanatory variables firm specific and business environmental estimation is by log linear regression on chinese cross section data with corrections for sample selection bias and heteroskedasticity our results from the comprehensive model highlight the importance of location choice and customer orientation for the growth of chinese private firms

the internationalization of small and medium sized firms this paper contributes to the existing research by integrating the notions of organizational learning and entrepreneurial orientation into the body of international entrepreneurship our primary framework combines learning theory and the new venture theory of internationalization to study the extent to which small and medium sized companies engage in international activities we found that the firms international learning effort and entrepreneurial orientation are positively associated with internationalization intent whereas domestic learning effort is negatively related with internationalization intent overall our results suggest 1 that intensive knowledge renewal and exploitation regarding foreign markets and the internationalization process itself may increase internationalization by affecting the perceptions of opportunities offered by further international expansion and 2 that firms with an entrepreneurial mindset may be more likely to develop a long term substantial presence in the international arena compared to firms that are more reactive or conservative

the economic performance of innovative small firms in the south east region and elsewhere in the uk thwaites a and wynarczyk p 1996 the economic performance of innovative small firms in the south east region and elsewhere in the uk reg studies 30 135 149 the paper explores the contribution of innovative small firms to local economic performance in different regional environments in the uk the empirical analysis is based on a sample of small independent firms listed on the spru innovation database 1975 83 it uses detailed financial and other data on each firm to examine their performance in different operational environments the results suggest that the average innovative sme exhibits many of the characteristics of a fast growth firm however the modus operandi of enterprise appears to differ between firms located in the south east region and other parts of the uk and these differences lead to variable outcomes in terms of employment asset and export growth thwaites a et wynarczyk p 1996 la performance economique des petites entreprises innovatrices situees dans la region sud est et d

education equity and intergenerational mobility quasi experimental evidence from court ordered school finance reforms starting from early seventies court ordered school finance reforms sfrs have fundamentally changed the landscape of primary and elementary education finance in the us this paper employs sfrs as quasi experiments to quantify the effects of education equity on intergenerational mobility within commuting zones first i use reduced form difference in difference analysis to show that 10 years of exposure to sfrs increases the average college attendance rate by about 5 2 for children with the lowest parent income the effect of exposure to sfrs decreases with parent income and increases with the duration of exposure second to directly model the causal pathways i construct a measure for education inequity based on the association between school district education expenditure and median family income using exposure to sfrs as the instrumental variable 2sls analysis suggests that one standard deviation reduction in education inequality will cause the average college attendance rate to increase by 2 2 for children at the lower end of the parent income spectrum placing the magnitudes of these effects in context i conclude that policies aimed at increasing education equity such as sfrs can substantially benefit poor children but they alone are not enough to overcome the high degree of existing inequalities key words public education finance intergenerational mobility school finance reforms quasi experiments

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

estimating permanent and transitory income elasticities of education spending from panel data abstract we use a twenty one year panel of data to examine the role of past income and aid and expectations of future income in regressions explaining state and local education spending we show that simple estimates of the elasticity of spending with respect to financial resources are not robust to specification changes because the variables are non stationary over time causing inconsistent estimation of model parameters estimation in first differences or equivalently in growth rates solves the time series problems and produces robust estimates of the model s parameters we then show that current spending by states responds to changes in expected future income this explains why using fixed effects in simpler models reduces estimated income elasticities fixed effects partially capture permanent income effects on spending estimates of lagged income are significant when used in models that do not explicitly model the expectations process but present and past aid both have no effect on education spending models with structural assumptions about expected income produce estimates very similar to simpler models which include lagged information on income as a control variable we conclude with recommendations for estimating models when only cross section data or only short panels are available

competition between private and public schools testing stratification and pricing predictions abstract when there are peer effects in education private schools have an incentive to vary tuition to attract relatively able students epple and romano american economic review 88 1 1998 33 develop a general equilibrium model characterizing equilibrium pricing and student selection into schools when peer effects are present the model predicts that competition will lead private schools to give tuition discounts to more able students and that this will give rise to an equilibrium exhibiting stratification by income and ability between the public and private sectors and to a hierarchy of schools within the private sector the model also yields a variety of comparative static predictions the predictions of the model are tested in this paper using a unique data set assembled by figlio and stone research in labor economics 1999 115 tests of equilibrium predictions of the model reveal that the propensity to attend private school increases with both income and ability and among private schools the propensity to attend the highest tuition schools rises with both income and ability within private schools tuition declines with student ability with a substantial number of even high income households paying little or no tuition the correlation between income and ability is greater in public than private schools tests of comparative static predictions of the model reveal that both income and ability become stronger predictors of private school attendance as public school expenditure falls income becomes increasingly important in determining placement in the private school hierarchy as public school expenditure falls discounts to ability in the lowest quality private school decline as public school expenditure rises while discounts to ability in the highest quality private school are little affected by changes in public school expenditure expenditure in private schools rises as expenditure in public schools increases these empirical results are consistent with the predictions of the theoretical model

immigration and spending on public education california 1970 2000 abstract the evolution of education spending in california has received plenty of attention from both academics and practitioners after this state s education finance reform in the 1970 s this paper quantifies the contribution of immigration to the relative decline in elementary and secondary public education spending per student in california in the period 1970 2000 a quantitative model of school choice and voting over public education is used to perform the counterfactual experiments of interest the model predicts that education spending per student in california would have been 24 higher in the year 2000 if u s immigration had been restricted to its 1970 level

corporate entrepreneurship strategy extending the integrative framework through the lens of complexity science whereas our understanding of corporate entrepreneurship ce and corporate entrepreneurship strategy ces continues to expand there has been little theoretical development to support the most extensive framework to date the integrative model of ces as proposed by ireland et al entrep theory pract 33 1 19 46 2009 according to the model ces is built upon the three foundational elements of an entrepreneurial strategic vision a pro entrepreneurship organizational architecture and entrepreneurial processes and behaviors as exhibited throughout the organization ireland et al 2009 p 38 the purpose of this study is to present a broad overarching theory complexity science to examine the key elements and propositions of the ces model complexity science founded on assumptions of interdependent heterogeneous agents and nonlinear interactions as well as non deterministic and potentially extreme outcomes offers established multi level concepts theoretical boundary conditions and methodological guidance for scholars to build and test future studies on ce and ces though our complexity perspective draws extensively from conceptual work on complex adaptive systems and agent based models we ground our arguments on the empirical ubiquity of power law distributions in all constructs and levels of analysis within the ces model we conclude with a detailed research agenda as well as a prescriptive discussion related to theory development quantitative analysis and practical applications to guide future studies on ce

effect of constraints on tiebout competition evidence from a school finance reform abstracteffect of constraints on tiebout competition evidence from a school finance reform regional studies michigan s school finance reform significantly increased state aid to low spending districts and placed restraints on the growth of spending in high spending districts it is noteworthy that there is no literature yet on the impact of such reforms on resource allocation by school districts this study begins to fill this gap it finds that the reform led the high spending districts to allocate a lower share of their total expenditure to support services and a higher share to instruction relative to the low spending districts to the extent that instructional expenditures are more productive and contribute to student achievement more than support services expenditures these results suggest that the reform led to a relative increase in productivity in the high spending districts

the effects of school spending on educational and economic outcomes evidence from school finance reforms since the coleman report many have questioned whether public school spending affects student outcomes the school finance reforms that began in the early 1970s and accelerated in the 1980s caused dramatic changes to the structure of k 12 education spending in the united states to study the effect of these school finance reform induced changes in public school spending on long run adult outcomes we link school spending and school finance reform data to detailed nationally representative data on children born between 1955 and 1985 and followed through 2011 we use the timing of the passage of court mandated reforms and their associated type of funding formula change as exogenous shifters of school spending and we compare the adult outcomes of cohorts that were differentially exposed to school finance reforms depending on place and year of birth event study and instrumental variable models reveal that a 10 increase in per pupil spending each year for all 12 years of public school leads to 0 31 more completed years of education about 7 higher wages and a 3 2 percentage point reduction in the annual incidence of adult poverty effects are much more pronounced for children from low income families exogenous spending increases were associated with notable improvements in measured school inputs including reductions in student to teacher ratios increases in teacher salaries and longer school years jel codes j10 i20 h7

outcome quality of small to medium sized enterprise based alliances abstract proponents of transaction cost theory have assumed that alliance formation is motivated by environmental uncertainty with the structure and outcomes of alliance relationships being determined by the costs versus benefits of opportunism on the part of alliance participants williamson 1985 zaheer and venkatraman 1995 williamson argued that cooperative relationships driven by perceived efficiency are inherently prone to opportunism or self interest seeking with guile 1975 p 6 in alliance relationships opportunism generally takes the form of negative departures from the behavioral norms established for the alliance and is usually motivated by the firm leader s desire to improve the firm s position regardless of the cost to the alliance parkhe 1993a the traditional focus of transaction cost theory has been on the norms established by the formal alliance relationship these contractual mandates encompass both goal based and relationship based expectations failure to meet these types of expectations significantly but not completely explains the quality of outcomes for alliance relationships a growing body of research on social control theory suggests that the social embeddedness of the alliance relationship may also establish behavioral norms against which opportunistic departures may be judged ouchi 1979 parkhe 1993b such norms are extracontractual or taken for granted expectations established by both the prior experience of the firms leaders and the placement of the firms alliance relationships within the network of interpersonal relationships maintained by the firms leaders this study explores the relative impact of negative departures from both contractual and extracontractual behavioral norms on the quality of alliance outcomes while controlling for a wide range of environmental and firm specific factors suggested to have an impact on alliance outcome quality norwegian manufacturing firms that met the study s size criteria and belonged to any one of 10 industry types were surveyed from a list of over 7 000 small to medium sized enterprises smes we randomly selected and mailed surveys to the key decision leaders of over 2 500 firms ultimately identifying of the 433 17 6 owners and general managers responding 252 58 that maintained alliance relationships the results of this study challenge several assumptions regarding the determinants of alliance outcomes a number of resource and environment based factors including the firm s industry size and financial strength are not found to significantly influence alliance outcomes the financial return provided by the sme s alliance relationships as an indicator of goal based determinants was found to be the most important factor related to outcome quality but the results also suggested that contract noncompliance and the perceived behaviors of the sme s alliance partners are significant as well additionally the notion that sme based alliance relationships are generally marked by assumptions of trust rather than opportunism was supported when partner behaviors are seen or perceived to be inconsistent with either contractually mandated or socially obligated expectations the outcomes of those relationships are negatively effected even when the financial goals have been met an additional finding of this study was that firm leaders make judgments regarding the quality of alliance outcomes in light of their cumulative experience with alliance relationships

a theory of distributional conflict voluntarism and segregation along with the rise in income inequality in the us there is evidence of a simultaneous move towards fiscal devolution and increased government reliance on private provision of public goods this article argues that these phenomena are related we describe a model of jurisdiction and policy formation in which the structure of government provision is endogenous and public good provision levels are determined by a political process that can exploit private motives for voluntary giving the model predicts that an increase in income inequality leads to decentralisation with local jurisdictions becoming more income homogeneous than the population as a whole this reduction in local income heterogeneity combined with a reduced tax base results in increased reliance by government on private provision

deciding when to quit reference dependence over slot machine outcomes abstract we conduct tests for reference dependent loss aversion using slot machine gamblers decisions on when to quit playing for a visit to a casino evidence for a lagged status quo reference po

education finance reform and the distribution of education resources between 1971 and 1996 opponents of local funding for public schools successfully challenged the constitutionality of school finance systems in sixteen states using the variation across states in the timing of these cases the authors investigate the impact of reform on the distribution of school resources their results suggest that court ordered finance reform reduced within state inequality in spending by 19 to 34 percent successful litigation reduced inequality by raising spending in the poorest districts while leaving spending in the richest districts unchanged thereby increasing aggregate spending on education reform led states to fund additional spending through higher state taxes copyright 1998 by american economic association

black white achievement differences and governmental interventions the estimates in the study considered whether any of the governmental or family factors individually could explain the magnitude and pattern of black white achievement gaps neither the level nor the distribution of school spending appears to provide much explanation for the gaps school spending levels show little consistent impact with any indication of differential impact on blacks being small direct analyses of the effects of spending equalization on performance similarly show little impact on the other hand governmental intervention through integration programs appears potentially more important

on the political economy of zoning abstract households choose a community in a metropolitan area and collectively set a minimum housing quality and a property tax to finance a local public good the collective imposition of a lower bound on housing consumption induces an income stratified equilibrium in a specification where meaningful community differentiation would not arise without zoning we show computationally that zoning restrictions are likely to be stringent with a majority facing a binding constraint in communities that permit it by inducing a stratified equilibrium zoning causes tiebout welfare gains in aggregate but with large welfare transfers relative to stratified equilibrium without zoning the zoning equilibrium is significantly more efficient as it reduces housing market distortions

family firm governance strategic conformity and performance institutional vs strategic perspectives a fundamental schism divides the family firm and strategy literatures on the one hand and the institutional literature on the other regarding both the situational prevalence and the utility of conforming behavior the first two schools respectively view strategic differentiation as especially common among family firms and an important source of competitive advantage by contrast the reasoning of institutionalists would suggest that family firms will be subject to unusually powerful motivations to conform in part because of their pursuit of socioemotional wealth objectives unfortunately the relationships between conformity and family firm governance and in fact governance in general have not been amply studied this analysis of fortune 1000 firms finds considerable support for the institutional perspective family involvement is related to greater not lesser conformity in many aspects of strategy although strategic conformity related to superior returns on assets it did not enhance firm market valuations

entrepreneurial orientation and small business performance a configurational approach the strategy and entrepreneurship literatures suggest that an entrepreneurial orientation eo improves firm performance but the empirical results are mixed in this article we investigate the eo of small businesses and find that a main effects only analysis provides an incomplete picture of performance access to capital and the dynamism of the environment are important to small businesses and we find that when combined with eo a three way interaction model the configurational approach explains variance in performance over and above a contingency model two way interactions and a main effects only model

education spending in an aging america abstract in this paper we use a national panel of public school districts to study the impact of an aging population on public education spending in contrast to previous analyses that use state level data we find that the elderly have only a modest overall negative effect on education spending at the district level our results confirm however that a growing share of elderly at the state level tends to depress state spending on education these results are consistent with the hypothesis that the elderly believe only higher local spending is capitalized into house values

the economics of schooling production and efficiency in public schools n recent years public and professional interest in schools has been heightened by a spate of reports many of them critical of current school policy these policy documents have added to persistent and long standing concerns about the cost effectiveness and fairness of the current school structure and have made schooling once again a serious public issue as in the past however any renewed interest in education is likely to be short lived doomed to dissipate as frustration over the inability of policy to improve school practice sets in this frustration about school policy relates directly to knowledge about the educational production process and in turn to underlying research on schools although the educational process has been extensively researched clear policy prescriptions flowing from this research have been difficult to derive 2 there exists however a consistency to the research findings that does have an immediate application to school policy schools differ dramatically in quality

offshore outsourcing as a source of international competitiveness for smes scholars typically view offshore outsourcing as a means of reducing the cost of manufacturing activities for large corporations yet offshore outsourcing may entail administrative and technical services and may include activities outsourced by small and medium sized enterprises smes drawing on research in international entrepreneurship and services we hypothesize and find evidence that offshore outsourcing of administrative and technical services by smes is associated with greater extent and scope of internationalization of sales offshore outsourcing enhances international competitiveness by enabling smes to reduce costs expand relational ties serve customers more effectively free up scarce resources and leverage capabilities of foreign partners

start up ventures towards the prediction of initial success abstract there are numerous studies on new product activities that try to measure the relative impact of different factors on success or failure the research on new ventures is less comprehensive and often only a few items are considered this article reports on the early results from a research program that is combining the research on both new products and new ventures to come up with a more comprehensive evaluation of relative success factors the literature was reviewed to determine the most significant factors found in prior work a 68 item questionnaire was developed and used with the chief executives of 24 new technical ventures all associated with the rpi incubator or technology park ten of the 17 factors investigated yielded reliable measurements which were then subjected to siepwise regression analysis to determine the relative impact of each factor on the two success measurements used initial quantified success and initial subjective success it should be recognized that initial success does not necessarily predict ultimate success an area to be investigated in continuing studies the two success measurements were not correlated and the correlations with the independent variables were therefore different initial quantified success showed a strong negative correlation with market attractiveness companies entering smaller or more slowly growing markets were doing better than those in the larger faster growing markets initial quantified success was positively correlated with the level of entrepreneurial characteristics exhibited by the leader s these were the only two variables exhibiting significant relationships with quantified success initial subjective success was negatively correlated with market dynamism rather than market attractiveness negative correlation was also measured with both r d intensity and the organic nature of the firm this latter finding is contrary to much of the new product literature which emphasizes the need for individual independence and initiative such may be the case with new products or ventures within large organizations but in small independent ventures the entrepreneur should provide strong control and guidance a positive correlation was observed with the entrepreneurial characteristics and also with the degree of match between the firm s experience and the new business requirements no significant correlation was observed with 1 product or service uniqueness 2 gross margin or 3 strategic aggressiveness the lack of correlation with these variables is surprising but it may be due to the small size of the sample the research confirmed two items that are understood by most scholars and experienced practitioners the importance of the entrepreneur and the importance of pursuing new ventures that match the technical and market experience of the team the less obvious results are those that suggest that success is favored by strong review and control by the entrepreneur rather than the development of employee initiative and independence also the initial success appears to be coming more readily to firms in more slowly growing or less dynamic markets it will take an expanded sample and a longer time horizon to determine if these initial trends continue to ultimate success

does parents money matter abstract this paper asks whether parents income per se has a positive impact on children s abilities previous research has established that income is positively correlated across generations this does not prove that parents money matters however since income is presumably correlated with ability this paper estimates the impact of parents income by focusing on income variation due to factors union industry and job loss that arguably represent luck i find that changes in parents income due to luck have a negligible impact on children s human capital for most families although parents money does matter for families whose father has low education

present or future incentives on the optimality of fixed wages with moral hazard abstract this paper uses a laboratory experiment to show that principals can defer all incentives for present effort to future payments and thus pay fixed wages and still motivate workers at the least cost whenever outcomes are observable this result contrasts with the prediction of the classical moral hazard model according to which future and present payments must be made contingent on present outcomes to induce effort at the least cost even though risk aversion cannot explain this result i estimate an expectation based reference dependent model to show that it is consistent with loss aversion

content and performance of growth seeking strategies a comparison of small firms in high and low technology industries abstract the question of how to grow and gain market share is repeatedly asked by small firm managers yet little help exists in the academic literature in terms of identification of specific business practices and competitive tactics associated with the pursuit of market share growth rather most discussion of appropriate strategies for small firm growth centers around the prescription of broad strategy types e g the often recommended niche strat egy furthermore the environment s potential effects on the viability of growth strategies seldom receive adequate treatment in the small firm strategy literature despite the long acknowledged influence of environmental conditions on strategy content this paper describes a study of the business strategies used by small growth seeking firms in high and low technology industries the construct of strategy was examined from both a micro level focusing on individual strategy dimensions and a macro level focusing on the firms overall strategic postures and patterns of strategy related variables data were collected from the senior executives of 57 small manufacturing firms whose mission strategies were to aggressively increase sales and market share the data indicate that growth seeking firms in high technology industries relative to those in low technology industries 1 rely more heavily on advertising 2 place more emphasis on product related issues e g new product development superior product warranties as a basis for building market share 3 rely more heavily on formal planning activities 4 place more emphasis on customer service support 5 rely more heavily on external financing 6 rely more heavily on premium pricing strategies and 7 have more entrepreneurial strategic postures the data also indicate that an entrepreneurial strategic posture is more positively associated with firm performance among growth seeking firms in low tech industries than among those in high tech industries although there are exceptions to this finding cluster analysis was used to identify the content and performance of various strategies operationally defined as patterns of strategic variables associated with growth seeking firms in high and low technology industries four strategies were identified through this technique two of which are most common among firms in low tech industries one of which is most common among firms in high tech industries and one of which is equally prevalent in both industry types these results corroborate several of the aforementioned findings regarding the effects of industry technological sophistication on dimensions of firm strategy for example they demonstrate the general aversion among growth seeking firms in low tech industries to premium pricing furthermore they suggest that overall growth seeking firms in low tech industries may be somewhat more disposed to pursuing cost leadership strategies and less disposed to pursuing differentiation strategies than growth seeking firms in high tech industries there were no overall performance differences across the four strategy types identified through the cluster analysis however the data suggest that an entrepreneurial strategic posture is most strongly associated with high performance among firms that have a cohesive and focused strategic mix or pattern of strategic decisions this finding holds for growth seeking firms in both industry types

predicting order and timing of new product moves the role of top management in corporate entrepreneurship abstract in this study we focused on new product move as a form of corporate entrepreneurial activity we developed hypotheses relating the characteristics of the top management team tmt to the order and timing of new product moves made by firms we analyzed 223 new product introduction moves from the personal computer long distance telecommunication and brewing industries from the period of 1975 1990 we found that firms with larger tmts were more likely to be first movers the hypothesis that firms with larger tmts are more likely to respond quickly to new product moves received marginal support the hypothesis that tmts more heterogeneous in terms of organizational tenure of executives are more likely to be first movers as well as earlier in the order of new product moves received marginal support we found contradictory results with tmt organizational tenure and tmt educational background heterogeneity as predictors of order and timing of new product moves subsequently we conducted industry wise analysis that revealed important differences in this new product entrepreneurial activity across the three industries

how did the increase in economic inequality between 1970 and 1990 affect children s educational attainment 1 this study estimates the effect of changes in economic inequality between 1970 and 1990 on children s educational attainment data on individual children from the panel study of income dynamics is combined with other data on state characteristics growing up in a state with widespread economic inequality increases educational attainment for high income children and lowers it for low income children most of the effect is due to factors unassociated with family income or economic segregation in the state these other factors include state spending for schooling and the increase in the returns to schooling over this period

determinants of microenterprise performance in nepal although the literature on entrepreneurship studies has contributed significantly in improving our insights regarding the factors determining the enterprise performance in a broader sense there has been a little research concerning the factors determining the microenterprise performance using primary data enumerated from 501 micro entrepreneurs randomly sampled across different strata gender caste ethnicity enterprise category and ecological belts in nepal in 2013 for the years 2068 bs april 2011 march 2012 and 2069 bs april 2012 march 2013 and executing the multiple linear regression models the study primarily focused on identifying the factors determining the microenterprise performance the study revealed that the entrepreneur related factors particularly gender managerial skills need for achievement need for autonomy creative tendency internal locus of control and managerial foresight enterprise related factors particularly enterprise age enterprise size and initial financial constraint and environment related factor particularly social network were the key factors determining the performance of microenterprises in nepal

entrepreneurship in the global firm introduction and overview types of subsidiary initiative fighting the corporate immune system how the initiative process works the consequences of initiative perspectives on the theory of entrepreneurship mapping the process of subsidiary evolution perspectives on theory of the multinational firm an internal market model of the multinational firm implications for management practice

macroeconomic uncertainty cultural traits and entrepreneurship the relationship between macroeconomic uncertainty and entrepreneurial activities has been the subject of intense debate among researchers however existing empirical studies report mixed findings

does school quality matter returns to education and the characteristics of public schools in the united states this paper estimates the effects of school quality measured by the pupil teacher ratio average term length and relative teacher pay on the rate of return to education for men born between 1920 and 1949 using earnings data from the 1980 census we find that men who were educated in states with higher quality schools have a higher return to additional years of schooling rates of return are also higher for individuals from states with better educated teachers and with a higher fraction of female teachers holding constant school quality measures however we find no evidence that parental income or education affects average state level rates of return

consumer loss aversion product experimentation and tacit collusion abstract two firms compete to attract loss averse consumers that are uncertain about how well the goods on sale fit their needs to resolve valuation uncertainty firms can allow prospective customers to test experiment their products before purchase we investigate firms dynamic incentives to allow experimentation and analyze the resulting effects on the profitability and the stability of tacit collusion depending on the regulatory regime in place i e whether experimentation is forbidden mandated or simply allowed but not imposed laissez faire the degree of loss aversion has ambiguous effects both on the profits that firms can achieve through tacit collusion and on the stability of these agreements while in static environments consumer welfare is always maximized by a policy that forbids experimentation the opposite happens in a dynamic environment

unintended consequence of centralized public school funding in michigan education 1 introductionin an effort to create greater equity among school districts a number of states have shifted the responsibility for school funding from local school districts to the state although many researchers have found that centralizing funding for public schools has been successful in creating greater equity murray evans and schwab 1998 moser and rubenstein 2002 other researchers have pointed out that centralizing funding can lead to unintended consequences for example fischel 1989 1992 suggests that families in wealthier districts which have a stronger demand for education are no longer able to match their preference for education under a system of equalized funding in some cases this may drive parents to seek private school alternatives downes and schoeman 1998 1 in other cases families meet their preferences by making private contributions to public schools sonstelie and brunner 1997 furthermore theobald and picus 1991 argue that centralizing funding forces education as a state service to compete with other state services for funds and as a result the growth rate of spending per pupil decreases over time 2 these articles illustrate that policies designed to centralize control of public school funding can produce unintended consequences in this article we introduce into the literature an additional consequence caused by centralizing control of school funding we argue that centralized control of public school funding with the objective to equalize operating expenditures i e salaries supplies and other ongoing expenses across school districts while leaving capital acquisitions i e purchases of school buildings and other facilities under local control results in resource rich school districts becoming more reliant on debt financing 3 we find empirical support for this theory using data in the state of michigan during its transition to a centralized school financing system in 1994 in the next section we present an overview of michigan s move to a centralized funding policy in the third section we present the regression model used to test the theory followed by the description of the data and the estimated results the final section of the study summarizes our findings 2 overview of michigan s educational systemin 1993 a legislative anomaly lead to an abrupt change in the method of financing public education in michigan prior to 1993 michigan had one of the most locally controlled school systems in the united states over 65 of school operating expenditures came from local revenues whereas the remaining 35 were derived from state and federal sources courant gramlich and loeb 1995 property owners argued that local reliance on property taxes created an excessive burden and voiced their complaints to state representatives attempts to lower these taxes were defeated annually until debbie stabenow a democrat senator and candidate for governor frustrated with the tax debate proposed an absurdity to eliminate all property taxes without suggesting an alternative funding mechanism courant and loeb 1997 astonishingly the legislature passed her bill leaving the public school system with no means of funding seizing an opportunity to create greater equity among school districts michigan officials quickly devised a centralized system of financing public school operations known as proposal a that reduces districts reliance on local property taxes by increasing the state s sales tax integrated into proposal a is a distribution formula that reduces the disparity in operating expenditures across high and low spending school districts in part by constraining the allocation of operating funds for high spending districts however proposal a does not affect local control of funding for capital projects watkins 2002 michigan s state operating budget typically provides less than 5 of the total revenue needed to service school debt and no revenue for capital expenditures

the economics of casino gambling america s casino industry expanded rapidly in the 1990s spreading from nevada and atlantic city to mining towns riverboats race tracks and tribal lands and moving from isolated resort settings to urban and suburban venues this article examines economic characteristics of the casino industry including the evolution of major casino markets pricing of gaming products market structures regulatory constraints and social and economic impacts attributable to casinos when competitive casinos show strong economies of scale and scope but many new jurisdictions limit the number or size of operations thus creating substantial economic rents allocation of these rents are fundamentally politically determined

the legacy of serrano the impact of mandated equal spending on private school enrollment 1 introduction the california supreme court decision in serrano v priest in 1971 was the first state supreme court ruling to declare a state s education finance system unconstitutional 1 the suit originally filed by a class of los angeles county public school children and their parents argued that the california public school finance system was unconstitutional because of its reliance on a local property tax system under this system large differences in property wealth created enormous variations in educational resources across the state in its subsequent 1976 serrano h decision the california supreme court found that the state legislature s response to the first serrano decision was insufficient the court ordered the state legislature to follow a trial court s requirement to implement a funding formula that reduces wealth related per pupil expenditure disparities i e property tax revenue exclusive of categorical aid and special needs to 100 across school districts the serrano ii decision resulted in a nearly complete shift of the fiscal responsibility for k 12 education in california from local to state government in the aftermath of the initial serrano decision suits were filed in several other states claiming unconstitutional inequities in the state education system many of these suits were successful between 1973 and 1983 six state supreme courts new jersey 1973 connecticut 1977 washington 1978 west virginia 1979 wyoming 1980 arkansas 1983 found their systems of educational finance unconstitutional similar rulings followed in 1989 in kentucky montana and texas in 1993 in massachusetts and tennessee in 1994 in arizona and in 1997 in new hampshire ohio and vermont a third of the states education finance systems now have been ruled unconstitutional as a result of these rulings and legislative based education reforms in a number of other states education expenditure inequality has been reduced 2 this in turn has left local districts with less latitude in determining spending levels parents in richer districts are expected to be especially frustrated with the limits on spending that accompany equalization changes in state educational finance systems to gain greater equity affected average spending on education in these states the initial research on this issue focused on the california experience where raw expenditure figures reveal the dramatic change in per pupil spending in california since the initial serrano decision in 1971 in academic year ay 1969 1970 per pupil spending in california s public elementary and secondary schools was slightly greater than the national average 106 25 of the national average ranking 14th among all states however by ay 1992 1993 education expenditures in california had fallen to 85 6 of the national average and its rank had dropped to 34th silva and sonstelie 1995 concluded that education spending in california in 1989 1990 was significantly lower than they would have otherwise predicted they attributed about half of the lowered spending to the legislation following serrano ii and the other half to the growth of the student population in california but the california experience of reduced expenditures appears to be atypical manwaring and sheffrin 1997 found spending to be higher in many states as a result of litigation or legislativebased educational finance reform downes and shah 1995 similarly estimated that school finance reform raised spending in some states and lowered spending in other states murray evans and schwab 1998 found state per pupil spending rose with successful state education finance litigation the variation across states in the spending effects of education finance reforms may be due to the source court ordered or legislative and or degree e g weak reform strong reform etc of the reforms in any case there should be greater interest in supplementing what the public schools do or opting out of the public system if reforms cause spending in a state to fall

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

corporate entrepreneurship and financial performance the case of management leveraged buyouts executive summary leveraged buyouts lbos have created much controversy in the literature centering on their potential effect on a company s ability to innovate engage in new ventures and support entrepreneurial projects some believe that post lbo debt reduces the financial resources available for entrepreneurial activities conversely others argue that despite the burden of debt some lbos provide executives with an opportunity to innovate and take risks malone 1989 however past studies have focused primarily on changes in r d spending and ignored other corporate entrepreneurship ce activities a firm might pursue additionally these studies have not documented the changes in ce after a management led lbo thus past studies offer only a snapshot of the effect of lbos on ce finally earlier studies did not directly examine the association between changes in entrepreneurial activities after the lbo and changes in performance to address these shortcomings this study adds to the literature in three ways first it compares a company s pre and post lbo commitment to corporate entrepreneurship ce measured along two dimensions innovation and venturing second the study compares pre and post company performance levels third the study shows how changes in a company s entrepreneurial activities impact performance therefore the following hypotheses were tested h1 a company s commitment to ce activities increases after an lbo h2a company performance will be higher after an lbo than before the transaction h2b post lbo company performance will surpass that of the firm s industry average h3 changes in post lbo ce activities venturing and innovations are positively associated with company financial performance data were collected from 47 lbo companies data were gathered from secondary sources to augment and validate interview data data collected from two executives per firm were averaged and the mean was then used in all analyses data covered the three years immediately before and three years immediately after the lbo companies in the sample were selected based on three criteria first at least 25 of the value of the lbo should have been paid by the firm s senior executives vice presidents and higher second the firm must have gone through a single lbo and must have remained private through the period of the study that eliminated reverse lbos from consideration finally the firm must have undergone its lbo at least three years before data collection this provided an opportunity to observe changes in a company s ce and performance multivariate analysis of covariance mancova analysis of covariance ancova and multiple regression were used to test the study s hypotheses the results supported h1 showing that lbo companies increased their commitment to developing new products placed greater emphasis on commercializing their technology enhanced the quality and size of their rd and intensified their new venture efforts however r d spending did not change significantly after the lbo the results also showed that post lbo company performance was significantly higher than pre lbo levels and the industry s average thus supporting h2a and h2b finally as stated in h3 changes in a company s ce activities were significantly associated with changes in post lbo company performance leveraged buyouts lbos have created considerable controversy among scholars executives and public policy makers concern centers on the potential impact of an lbo on a company s willingness to innovate and engage in entrepreneurial ventures to date little empirical research has been devoted to documenting the changes that occur in a company s entrepreneurial behavior after an lbo and to linking these changes to company performance using data from 47 lbos this study s results lead to three conclusions first companies reported increases in their product development technology related alliances r d staff size and capabilities and new business creation activities moreover these firms did not change their r d spending or the focus of r d projects second post lbo company performance was higher than pre lbo levels third changes in corporate entrepreneurship activities after lbos were significantly and positively associated with changes in company performance

the political economy of school choice linking theory and evidence abstract we derive an improved methodology for linking theoretical parameters of a political economy model of school choice to empirical values estimated by regressing local private enrollment shares on mean income the median to mean ratio religious and ethnic composition and other variables this leads us to reject the commonly maintained assumption that a coalition of ends against the middle determines local school funding and to conclude instead that the median income voter is decisive it also allows us to estimate the perceived relative efficiency advantage of private schooling which we find to be about 30 at the margin

legal constraints and the choice of educational grant structures recent empirical work suggests that legalconstraints are significant in choosingstate educational grant structures unfortunately the literature has not takensuch constraints into account thus callinginto question particular grant structurerecommendations this paper studies theconditions under which a legislature underorder to reform its educational grantstructure prefers foundation grants overdistrict power equalization grants atheoretical model is presented in which thechoice is shown to depend on the legalbasis of the court s decision and theempirical validity of this conclusion isdemonstrated using connecticut data and aseparate model of school districtexpenditure choice

entrepreneurial propensity of innovation systems theory methodology and evidence abstract this paper develops theoretically methodologically and empirically the notion of the entrepreneurial propensity of innovation system by integrating knowledge intensive entrepreneurship kie and innovation system is concepts it first uses a composite index methodology to measure knowledge intensive entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial opportunities at the national level it then applies cluster analysis based on composite indexes for the eu countries in order to group them by entrepreneurial opportunities we also assess the influence of a system s complementary activities on the emergence of kie by partial least squares path modelling pls pm method pls demonstrates that the epis is statistically sound concept and that kie is affected by market technological and institutional opportunities the paper provides empirical evidence that institutions affect knowledge intensive entrepreneurial experimentation not directly but via technology and markets kie is market driven process however its overall effects are determined not solely by market opportunities but by interaction of market with technological and institutional opportunities hence we show that kie is a systemic feature of is and that new knowledge innovation and entrepreneurship are inseparable elements of a dynamic is

intertemporal incentives under loss aversion this paper studies the intertemporal allocation of incentives in a repeated moral hazard model with reference dependent preferences as in k oszegi and rabin 2009 besides consumption utility the agent experiences utility from the change in his beliefs about present and future eort and income when eort plans are rational the prospect of being disappointed by the outcome realization equals that of being pleasantly surprised and hence the loss averse agent is on net hurt by news in contrast to the prediction with classical preferences but consistent with real world contracts if consumption utility is not too concave and news about present income carries suciently larger weight in utility than news about future income a contract setting a current

the impact of competitors firm power divergence on chinese smes environmental and financial performance competitor pressure is one of the major reasons that a sme engages in environmentally friendly or damaging activities extant research has argued that environmental strengths and concerns have mirror opposite relationships with stakeholder antecedents as well as with performance outcomes we suggest this argument does not reflect the reality building on stakeholder management and red queen theories we hypothesize that environmental strengths and concerns have differential relationships with competitors firm power exchange and financial performance for chinese smes results of ten interviews a pretest and a large scale field study indicate that competitors firm power divergence has a positive relationship with environmental strengths yet the link between this divergence and environmental concerns does not exist further environmental strengths mediate the relationship between competitors firm power divergence and financial performance of chinese smes

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

the entrepreneurial orientation performance relationship in private family firms the moderating role of socioemotional wealth drawing on socioemotional wealth sew literature this paper revisits the established entrepreneurial orientation eo performance relationship in a family business context the main idea in entrepreneurship literature is that eo leads to increased firm performance we question this logic in a family business context because family related non financial goals like sew may prevent the firm to reap the fruits of their entrepreneurial efforts specifically we argue that sew engenders inefficiencies that place constraints on the realization of the benefits of entrepreneurship therefore we propose that a high level of sew preservation hinders the transmission of the family firm s eo into positive performance effects to test this hypothesis an empirical study was developed using a sample of 232 belgian private family firms robust linear regression analysis reveals that the positive effect of eo on financial performance decreases as the level of sew preservation increases

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

political economy of the inequality in school spending abstract this paper employs data from 45 states between 1972 and 1992 to investigate the basic forces affecting school resource inequality within a state we consider a wide range of determinants of inequality including voter preferences the tax and political structure within the state and the legal standing of education within the state constitution we find that state constitutional language regarding equity affects the degree of school spending equality in the state as does the political environment in the state and factors associated with the benefits and costs of tiebout sorting into school districts

adapting the uppsala model to a modern world macro context and microfoundations vahlne and johanson 2017 present the multinational business enterprise mbe as a new form of cross border organization that supersedes the multinational enterprise mne they offer a general model of the evolution of the mbe arguing that the mbe evolves through ongoing internationalization processes by proactively and entrepreneurially engaging in business exchange rather than production in this counterpoint we focus on two critical dimensions absent from vahlne and johanson s 2017 arguments the impact of the digital context as a defining macro level feature of our modern world and the role of the individual as a core microfoundation of the internationalization process we argue that a robust theory of the evolution of the modern firm must necessarily account for these dimensions to explicate these impacts we draw from a range of complementary research streams across international business entrepreneurship and international entrepreneurship we identify research implications for scholars seeking to further advance the uppsala model of internationalization and those who will use the revised model to study the modern multinational

federalism fertility and growth this paper analyses the effect of federalism on fertility and growth in a model with human capital accumulation and endogenous fertility two regimes of education finance are compared central and local i find that local education finance yields higher growth at the price of increased inequality the effect of federalism on total and differential fertility rates depends on the elasticity of substitution between children and consumption the paper also empirically examines the relationship between fertility rates and fiscal decentralisation on a panel of oecd countries and finds a weak negative effect of decentralisation on total and differential poor minus rich fertility

the effect of state education finance reform on total local resources abstract both the federal government and the states use intergovernmental grants to try to change the composition of local spending across different programs as well as the distribution of resources across localities many states are now under court order to use state education grants to reduce local disparities in education spending while a substantial body of literature suggests that these court orders increase the level and progressivity of state education spending there is little evidence on their broader effects on the total resources available not just for schools in low income districts but for other programs across all localities we find that states finance the required increase in education spending in part by reducing their aid to localities for other programs particularly for wealthier areas thus while court ordered school finance equalizations do increase total state aid to localities for education they do so at the expense of drawing state intergovernmental aid away from programs like public welfare health hospitals and general services these findings provide insight into the effectiveness of using earmarked funds to achieve redistribution

technological trajectories as moderators of firm level determinants of innovation pavitt research policy 13 1984 343 identified different patterns of technological change technological trajectories in four sectoral classes of industrial firms this paper tests the applicability of pavitt s taxonomy which derived from an economic perspective to moderate the inconsistent results of the management literature on the determinants of technological innovation an empirical test in a sample of 105 greek companies showed that firms in different trajectories of pavitt s taxonomy had differences in the rate of technological innovation specialised suppliers and science based firms were found to have higher rates of innovation than supplier dominated and scale intensive ones most importantly different variables proved to be significantly associated with innovation for each category of firms innovation for supplier dominated firms was related to the competitive environment acquisition of information technology strategy risk attitude and internal co ordination for scale intensive firms the important determinants were related to the ability to raise funding and the education and experience of personnel for specialised suppliers innovation was associated with high growth rate and exporting as well as training and incentives offered to the employees to contribute towards innovation science based firms depended upon technology related variables education and experience of personnel growth in profitability and panel discussions with lead customers the application of pavitt s model can resolve the apparent problem of inconsistent results in the management research on the determinants of technological innovation

estimating the effects of school finance reform a framework for a federalist system abstract this paper models the effect of increased state involvement in school funding on education spending levels unlike previous studies that have assumed perfect sorting of voters into districts by income this analysis assumes demand sorting i thus am able to utilize the true distribution of wealth across districts to estimate tax price changes and to predict changes in district spending levels in response to a change in financing rules i look specifically at three types of state funding programs those in which districts receive a set per pupil grant from the state and are not allowed to raise additional funds those in which districts are allowed to raise unlimited additional funds and those in which this supplementation is capped both the model and the subsequent simulations indicate that the ostensible benefits of a system with unlimited local supplementation that it retains much local control over funding decisions on the margin while insuring an adequate level of financing for all districts may not be sustainable because high wealth districts have no incentive to support state funding additionally a system with no local supplementation may be politically difficult because it forces many voters far from their preferred spending levels capped supplementation provides a balance between local control and spending equity

using market valuation to assess public school spending abstract we examine whether school expenditures are valued by potential residents and whether the current level of public school provision is inefficient by estimating the effect of state education aid on residential property values we find evidence that overall state aid is valued by potential residents and that school districts do not overspend on education however we find that districts may overspend in areas where residents have fewer schooling options but find no difference in efficiency by the degree of district unionization one interpretation of these results is that increased competition may reduce overspending on public schools in some areas

changing roles of ability and education in u s intergenerational mobility using data on young adults from the 1979 and 1997 national longitudinal survey of youth we investigate the changing roles of ability and education in the transmission of economic status across generations we find that ability plays a substantially diminished role for the most recent cohort whereas education plays a much larger role the first finding results primarily from a smaller effect of children s ability on status the second from an increased correlation between parental status and educational attainment a replication of the analysis by gender reveals that the changes in the role of ability are largely driven by men whereas the changes in education s role are largely driven by women jel j62 i24

all school finance equalizations are not created equal school finance equalization has probably affected american schools more than any other reform of the last 30 years understanding it is a prerequisite for making optimal social investments in human capital yet it is poorly understood in this paper i explain why it differs from conventional redistribution because it is based on property values which are endogenous to schools productivity taste for education and the school finance system itself i characterize equalization schemes and show why some level down and others level up schemes that strongly level down have unintended consequences even poor districts can end up worse off i also show how school finance equalization affects property prices private school attendance and student achievement

the effects of spending on test pass rates evidence from michigan abstract this study uses data on standardized test scores from 1992 through 1998 at michigan schools to determine the effects of spending on student performance the years in the data set straddle 1994 when michigan dramatically changed the way that k 12 schools are funded and moved toward equalization of spending across schools focusing on pass rates for a fourth grade math tests the most complete and consistent data available for michigan i find that increases in spending have nontrivial statistically significant effects on math test pass rates and the effects are largest for schools with initially poor performance

the effect of increased funding on student achievement evidence from texas s small district adjustment abstract we leverage an obscure set of rules in texas s school funding formula granting some districts additional revenue as a function of size and sparsity we use variation from kinks and discontinuities in this formula to ask how districts spend additional discretionary funds and whether these improve student outcomes a 1000 annual increase in foundation funding or 10 increase in expenditures yields a 0 1 s d increase in reading scores and a near 0 08 increase in math in addition dropout rates decline graduation rates marginally increase as does college enrollment and to a smaller degree graduation these gains accrue in later grades and largely among poorer districts an analysis of budget allocations reveals that additional funding only marginally affects budget shares

where does voucher funding go how large scale subsidy programs affect private school revenue enrollment and prices using a new dataset constructed from nonprofit tax returns this paper explores how vouchers and other large scale programs subsidizing private school attendance have affected the fiscal outcomes of private schools and the affordability of a private education we find that subsidy programs created a large transfer of public funding to private schools suggesting that every dollar of funding increased revenue by a dollar or more turning to the incidence of subsidies and the impact of subsidies on enrollment our findings depend on the type of program introduced programs that restrict eligibility to certain groups of students create large enrollment gains but no change in price while programs that offer unrestricted subsidies lead to price increases but no change in enrollment we calculate elasticities of demand and supply for private schools and discuss welfare effects