parametric rationing methods abstract in a rationing problem a single homogeneous good is allocated among agents with possibly complex characteristics or types when types are single positive numbers agents claims young s theorem says that in the presence of continuity a method of rationing is consistent and symmetric if and only if it can be represented by a continuous parametric function this theorem is generalized to all separable type spaces related results include a characterization of non continuous parametric methods and a simple criterion for deciding when a two agent method can be consistently extended to a multi agent method an application to the multi category bankruptcy problem is described

measuring entrepreneurship over time abstract this article is a review of three measurement issues that impact the study of entrepreneurship over time 1 level of analysis difference between firms and individuals 2 differences between rate and stock measures and 3 the effects of choosing particular time frames on subsequent analytical results based on theory that views entrepreneurship as depending on ownership rights hawley 1907 this article develops a longitudinal measure of entrepreneurship in the united states the number of organizations per capita the problems and advantages of using a measure based on organizations per capita as an indicator of entrepreneurship is examined understanding how and what is being measured in studies of changes in entrepreneurship over time is an important issue for academic researchers and public policy makers measurement of changes in entrepreneurship over time can shed light on important research questions and public policy issues about entrepreneurship for example is entrepreneurship increasing in the united states if entrepreneurship is increasing is this trend comparable to any previous time periods or is the current increase in entrepreneurship a new or unique social phenomenon what influences changes in entrepreneurship over time the choice of certain measures of entrepreneurship is likely to influence the answers to these questions for example the measures used in an entrepreneurship study are an implicit specification of one s views of entrepreneurship e g entrepreneurship as self employment or firm creation and few measures of entrepreneurship reflect critical changes in important environmental influences e g technological change because of short measurement time frames therefore determining the contribution of entrepreneurship to the well being of an economy is dependent on understanding what measures of entrepreneurship are utilized for making these evaluations and the time frame used for these measures we review three measurement issues that impact the study of entrepreneurship over time 1 level of analysis differences between firms and individuals 2 differences between rate and stock measures and 3 the effects of choosing particular time frames on subsequent analytical results based on theory that views entrepreneurship as depending on ownership rights hawley 1907 this article develops a longitudinal measure of entrepreneurship in the united states the number of organizations per capita studies of entrepreneurship focus on either individual level activity e g self employment or on firm level activity e g new incorporations self employment research focuses on individuals who employ themselves that is individuals who report wages but not wages paid to them by other individuals or organizations in most studies of the self employed firm founders would therefore be classified as wage earners and not as entrepreneurs new firm research focuses on the rate of new firm entrants typically measured as new incorporations so such businesses as proprietorships or partnerships will not be counted a rate is a change from one state to another e g the number of people who become self employed for a specific year or the number of new firms created for a specific year whereas a stock specifies a particular level e g much like a stock of inventory such as the number of self employed or a particular number of firms for a specific time period it is important to recognize that entry into business does not necessarily guarantee remaining in business for example although the number of people who become self employed may increase for a specific year the number of people who remain self employed may actually decrease if more of the self employed fail to remain in business than those that enter the stock of the self employed can decrease if the outflow of self employed is greater than the inflow for those persons interested in whether entrepreneurial activity results in wealth creation either individually or societally the realization that entry into business may not lead to a sustainable business and therefore no creation of wealth should be a signal that measuring rates of business formation and rates of self employment may not be appropriate for this type of research the factors that drive changes in the rate of entrepreneurship are not likely to be manifest over short timeperiods changes in values attitudes technology government regulations and world economic and social changes have a significant influence on changes in entrepreneurship over time studies that have measured entrepreneurship over recent time periods are therefore likely to miss the influence of these variables we introduce a measure of entrepreneurship organizations per capita based on a theory of entrepreneurship as ownership this measure shows the stock of organizations in the u s economy over time from 1857 to 1992 the problems and advantages of using a measure based on organizations per capita as an indicator of entrepreneurship is examined we conclude with some suggestions for improving entrepreneurship research by recognizing the limitations of particular longitudinal entrepreneurship measures and by challenging the field to seek convergent validity among measures

trade offs in the investment decisons of european venture capitalists abstract previous studies of venture capital investment criteria which have tended to utilize traditional likert scaled survey methods have produced some general findings which indicate that the human factor is of utmost importance however virtually all of these studies have been undertaken with u s based venture capitalists in addition the studies have generally been exploratory and have assumed a single hierarchy of decision criteria in all cases and across all venture capitalists we do not accept that this is valid therefore our study tested this assumption by investigating the trade offs made by venture capitalists in europe thirty five investment criteria were identified from the literature and from experts in the field and a questionnaire was developed that required the venture capitalist to make 53 pairwise trade offs with multiple levels seventy three venture capitalists from across europe were interviewed and completed the questionnaire conjoint analysis was used to compute relative rankings and overall rankings were computed to provide some general insight into the overall importance of the various criteria after this cluster analysis was used to identify different decision groupings the trade offs were randomized in the questionnaire but for descriptive purposes fall into the following groupings financial product market strategic competitive fund management team management competence and deal all five management team criteria as opposed to management competence criteria were ranked among the first seven product market criteria appeared to be only moderately important and fund and deal criteria were at the bottom of the rankings overall we conclude that the venture capitalists interviewed would as a group prefer to select an opportunity that offers a good management team and reasonable financial and product market characteristics even if the opportunity does not meet the overall fund and deal requirements it appears quite logically that without the correct management team and a reasonable idea good financials are generally meaningless because they will never be achieved cluster analysis identified three groupings of venture capitalists those primarily concerned with investing nationally those who focus solely upon the deal and those mainstream investors who consistently and instinctively rank the five management team criteria at the top of their list however there was no evident country bias a conclusion that is sustained if the countries are grouped by physical proximity northern versus southern europe or by size of the local venture capital community a surrogate for experience moreover there was no relationship to the scale of the fund the typical round of financing or the apparent network the article concludes by outlining the implications of the study for venture capitalists entrepreneurs and the research community

science parks and the performance of new technology based firms a review of recent u k evidence and an agenda for future research science parks were established to stimulate the formation and development of new technology based firms ntbfs despite the potential importance of these institutions as a mechanism for generating technological spillovers and employment growth there has been little systematic analysis of their impact on ntbfs in this paper we review some recent evidence comparing the performance of firms located on and off u k science parks this preliminary evidence suggests that the returns to being located on a science park are negligible we conjecture that these results may be due to imprecise estimates of these returns and may also be masking important differences in the returns to different types of science parks in addition we outline an agenda for additional research on the effects of these institutions on ntbf performance

a common ground for resource and welfare egalitarianism resource egalitarianism and welfare egalitarianism are two focal conceptions of distributive justice we show in this paper that they share a solid common ground to do so we analyze a simple model of resource allocation in which agents abilities to transform the resource into an interpersonally comparable outcome and starting points may differ both conceptions of egalitarianism are naturally modeled in this context as two allocation rules the two rules are jointly characterized by the combination of three appealing axioms no domination solidarity and composition

the fall and rise of the petty bourgeoisie changing patterns of self employment in the postwar united states this article explores the historical trajectory of the self employed segment of the labor force in the united states particularly since 1940 self employment declined in the united states almost steadily from the 19th century to the early 1970s since then it has risen every year explaining this reversal in the historical fortunes of the petty bourgeoisie is the central task of this article we reach four basic conclusions first the reversal in the decline of the self employed is statistically significant and robust across a range of definitions of self employment rates second this reversal is not a simple countercyclical response to the increase in unemployment since the middle 1970s third part of the resurgence of self employment result from the expansion of various postindustrial services that tend to have higher levels of self employment within them within postindustrial sectors however there has not generally been any increase in self employment fourth a significant part of the expansio

stigma and business failure implications for entrepreneurs career choices we use data from global entrepreneurship monitor to examine the act of entrepreneurial reentry by entrepreneurs who exit a failed business we study reentry by mode of entry and by form of organizing we find that in countries where the levels of stigma and regulatory conveyance of stigma markings were at their highest entrepreneurs who exited failed businesses were less likely to reenter into entrepreneurial activity our finding suggests that negative social and economic sanctions that are associated with stigma markings speak only to one side of the entrepreneurship phenomenon on the other side stigma can function as a stimulus for entrepreneurs to defy the illegitimacy of the failed business and to actively seek out and engage in innovative behaviors that contribute to the overall diversity of entrepreneurial activities in their country

the impact of entrepreneurial capacity experience and organizational support on academic entrepreneurship abstract although sources and determinants of academic entrepreneurship have begun to command the attention of policy makers and researchers there remain many unanswered questions about how individual and social factors shape the decisions of academics to engage in entrepreneurial activities using a large scale panel of academics from a variety of uk universities from 2001 to 2009 this paper examines how an academics level of entrepreneurial capacity in terms of opportunity recognition capacity and their prior entrepreneurial experience shape the likelihood of them being involved in starting up a new venture in addition we explore what role university technology transfer offices ttos play in stimulating venture creation the results show that individual level attributes and experience are the most important predictors of academic entrepreneurship we also find that the social environment surrounding the academic also plays an influential role but its role is much less pronounced than individual level factors finally we show that the activities of the tto play only a marginal indirect role in driving academics to start new ventures we explore the implications of this analysis for policy and organizational design for academic entrepreneurship

a typology of new manufacturing firm founders in wales performance measures and public policy implications abstract a typology of new manufacturing firm founders in wales is presented factors associated with the parental entrepreneurial background employment history and the characteristics of the founder s previous employer prior to start up are explored through the adoption of principal components analysis and cluster analysis a typology of new firm founders is detailed on the basis of 14 characteristics the six founder types are shown to have different abilities to generate new jobs create new wealth and export their manufactured products public policy should not solely be concerned with the number of new firms and the rate of new firm foundation different founder types have established new firms of variable quality in terms of potential for job generation wealth creation and ability to export on a competitive basis there is no shortage of potential new firm founders in wales and public policy should aim to discourage those individuals who are clearly unsuitable for entrepreneur ship if the objective of policy is geographical welfare there is the case for extra assistance to be directed to those regions associated with deep seated factors that make them less conducive to successful entrepreneurial formation and development assistance could vary according to local need in the cause of regional equity policy measures and schemes could be restricted to those areas with the lowest levels of entrepreneurial potential government in this way could minimize its financial commitment to new firms policy while maximizing its effectiveness finally it is suggested that public policy should be targeted to those founder types in problem areas who have the greatest potential for establishing successful new ventures

habitual entrepreneurs in the making how labour market rigidity and employment affects entrepreneurial re entry we investigate the impact of country level labour market regulations on the re entry decision of experienced entrepreneurs whereby they become habitual entrepreneurs multilevel logit models on entry decisions among 15 709 individuals in 29 european countries show that labour market regulations have a positive influence on the decision to re enter into entrepreneurship this positive impact is stronger among individuals holding wage jobs at the time of re entry compared to those that do not our results indicate that novice and habitual entrepreneurs may respond very differently to labour market rigidity we discuss and provide tentative explanations for these differences and outline potential policy implications

no news is bad news sensegiving activities media attention and venture capital funding of new technology organizations a significant body of research has examined how new organizations gain legitimacy and how gaining it affects their subsequent access to resources less attention has been given to the problem of how new organizations attract collective attention although related to legitimation the problem of attracting attention is distinct as attention and evaluation are distinct cognitive processes in this study we examine the allocation of collective attention to new organizations in a system of relationships within which new organizations seek to attract attention through their sensegiving activities the information properties of their sensegiving activities affect the level of attention they receive from different types of media and media attention in turn increases their perceived value potential in the eyes of venture capital investors vcs we examine these relationships in a sample of 398 information technology start ups that have obtained different levels of venture capital funding our results show that new organizations that engage in more intense and diverse sensegiving activities attract higher levels of industry media attention and that these effects are enhanced by the human capital of their founders and leaders diverse sensegiving activities are also associated with higher levels of attention from the general media but only the attention of specialized industry media is positively associated with the level of vc funding obtained these findings extend current research on information intermediation and institutional legitimation by demonstrating that media attention early in the life of new organizations affects how they are valued by a well informed expert audience such as vcs they also contribute to entrepreneurship research on the effects of new organizations strategies on their ability to secure resources and to research on vc funding decisions

game theoretic analysis of a bankruptcy problem from the talmud abstract for three different bankruptcy problems the 2000 year old babylonian talmud prescribes solutions that equal precisely the nucleoli of the corresponding coalitional games a rationale for these solutions that is independent of game theory is given in terms of the talmudic principle of equal division of the contested amount this rationale leads to a unique solution for all bankruptcy problems which always coincides with the nucleolus two other rationales for the same rule are suggested in terms of other talmudic principles needless to say the rule in question is not proportional division

who become serial and portfolio entrepreneurs serial entrepreneurs run multiple businesses in sequence while portfolio entrepreneurs run multiple businesses in parallel they differ from novice entrepreneurs who have so far operated only one venture the present paper is the first to model occupational choices between all three entrepreneurial types it goes on to discuss its theoretical predictions in the light of independent evidence about serial and portfolio entrepreneurship from the extant literature

the real effects of public investment on private investment one of the main policy questions that emanated from the macro rational expectations literature and the focus of many empirical studies is whether expected government policy has an effect on real output and or whether unanticipated government policy has a permanent effect on real output many of the empirical studies have examined this question directly by testing whether a statistically significant relationship exists between real output or employment and some form of an aggregate demand policy variable the conflicting results of these studies fail to either validate of refute the neutrality proposition a shortcoming of these empirical studies arises because government spending is viewed merely as an additive component of aggregate demand and is therefore modelled on the demand side only if however the productivity of private investment is correlated with aggregate demand policy there will exist supply side effects also another approach to determine any effects of public capital on private c

private firms and corporate governance an integrated economic and management perspective this article provides a definition of corporate governance and highlights the challenges in adapting understanding of governance to the privately held firm we emphasize the need to develop the scope of governance in privately held firms beyond the traditional agency theory focus in the financial economics literature relating to large publicly listed corporations there is a need to draw on and integrate an array of theoretical perspectives from both economics and other social science disciplines as well we present a schematic model of corporate governance which places the contributions presented in the special issue in context and which serves as a guide to highlighting gaps in the research base we review the principal issues relating to corporate governance in privately held firms which relate to governance in different organizational contexts institutional context the industrial sector within which the firm finds itself the ownership context of the firm and the stage within the firm s life cycle the scope of corporate governance and other internal governance mechanisms to be considered we identify areas for further research on corporate governance in privately held firms with respect to processes of governance organizational contexts assumptions about the owners executive remuneration financial reporting the nature of the dependent variable relating to the expected outcome of different approaches to governance and various methodological issues we suggest a need to develop governance codes for privately held firms that are flexible enough to take account of the different types of governance needs of firms at different stages in their life cycle

look before you leap market opportunity identification in emerging technology firms entrepreneurs play a fundamental role in bringing new technologies to market because technologies are often configurable to serve a variety of different markets it is possible for entrepreneurs to identify multiple market opportunities prior to the first market entry of their emerging firms and if they elect to do so to therefore have a choice of which market to enter first the empirical results presented in this paper offer three new insights regarding this important early stage choice in new firm creation first they reveal that serial entrepreneurs have learned through prior start up experience to generate a choice set of alternative market opportunities before deciding which one to pursue in their new firm creation second the analysis indicates that entrepreneurs who identify a choice set of market opportunities prior to first entry derive performance benefits by doing so third the positive relationship between the number of market opportunities identified prior to first entry and new firm performance is nonlinear and subject to decreasing marginal return the research literature has yet to acknowledge the notion of multiple opportunity identification prior to entry and the related idea of selecting the most favorable market opportunity for the creation of a new technology firm

entrepreneurship and the initial size of firms abstract it is clear that entrepreneurs and their firms can vary widely nevertheless most of the research to date on entrepreneurship has examined central tendencies with relatively little attention devoted to entrepreneurial diversity this study examines one of the most distinguishing characteristics of young firms initial size the focus is whether smaller start ups differ from larger ones in the backgrounds of the entrepreneurs their processes of starting or the subsequent patterns of development in this longitudinal study an initial sample of 1903 young firms was examined to determine differences in characteristics of the entrepreneurs and in their processes of starting one year later data were obtained from 742 of these firms permitting analysis of how initial firm size was related to subsequent difficulties encountered and changes made as well as to performance as expected along almost every dimension these starting larger firms had the backgrounds that would seem to be necessary for the assembly of substantial resources they tended to have more education more management experience and goals that were more managerial in nature they also were more likely to have partners women were associated more often with smaller ventures but for this sample there were no differences in the representation of minorities between the smaller and larger start ups those starting larger ventures tended to rely more upon external investors and to start ventures more closely linked to their previous jobs both groups of entrepreneurs sought information from a number of sources but those founding larger ventures utilized professional advisors more whereas those starting smaller ventures utilized informal sources in the year after the first questionnaire differences between the two groups were less marked than expected both groups of surviving firms reported low levels of serious problems with the smaller ventures somewhat surprisingly reporting serious problems less often there were not many differences in changes made except that smaller ventures were more likely to lose partners and larger ventures were more likely to add branches or locations both groups reported high rates of mean growth in sales the smaller ventures with their small initial bases showed larger percentage increases smaller ventures also showed higher percentage increases in employment and surprisingly a greater increase in the absolute number of employees somewhat more of the smaller ventures had discontinued both groups included many firms that grew substantially and others that scaled back demonstrating the fluidity and experimentation characteristic of young firms for entrepreneurs and their advisors for public policy makers and for researchers any progress in understanding entrepreneurial processes should in the long run enhance venture performance the patterns observed here indicate that firms of different initial size tend to be associated with particular entrepreneurial characteristics processes of formation and subsequent patterns of development this diversity should be recognized in the development of assistance programs and university courses as well as in the interpretation of previous research for public policy makers the growth of these firms both small and large indicates the potential of economic contributions from entrepreneur ship further the growth of the smaller start ups suggests that even those ventures that appear to have few resources and modest potential can in the aggregate contribute substantially to the economy

novice portfolio and serial founders are they different abstract there is growing interest in entrepreneurs who have been involved in more than one venture yet to date there has been relatively little theoretical development and systematic empirical examination of the topic in particular there has been little attention to the potential heterogeneity of habitual entrepreneurship this study aims to contribute to this emerging area in two ways first it outlines a conceptual typology of habitual entrepreneurs who have founded purchased or inherited businesses second the empirical part of the study focuses on owner managers providing an exploratory analysis of the characteristics and effects of independent business ownership by novice portfolio and serial founders novice founders are those that have no prior entrepreneurial experience as either a founder an inheritor or a purchaser of a business portfolio founders retain their original business and inherit establish and or purchase another business serial founders are those who sell their original business but at a later date inherit establish and or purchase another business the study derives propositions suggesting differences among the three types of founders at the individual founder level of analysis similarities as well as differences in the personal background work experiences reasons leading to the start up of businesses and personal attitudes to entrepreneurship of these three types of entrepreneurs are explored at the organizational level of analysis finance employment and performance differences among the businesses owned by the three types of entrepreneurs are presented the issues are examined using a sample of entrepreneurs who were the principal owner managers of independent businesses in great britain the sample included 389 novice founders 62 6 75 portfolio founders 12 1 and 157 serial founders 25 3 no statistically significant differences were found among the three groups of entrepreneurs with regard to the main industrial activity geographical location and the age of their businesses univariate and multivariate tests were used to examine potential differences between the groups the results of the study show significant differences between portfolio and serial founders with regard to their parental background work experience and their age when they started their first business differences were also found with respect to reasons leading to start up personal attitudes to entrepreneurship and sources of funds used during the launch period of the surveyed business these findings suggest that habitual entrepreneurs cannot be treated as a homogeneous group the analysis however failed to find any significant differences between the performance of the surveyed firms owned by habitual founders and novice founders and between the two types of habitual founders the findings of the study indicate for researchers that there is a need to carefully define the unit of analysis in any examination of entrepreneurs in particular there is a need to take note of the heterogeneity of types of entrepreneur and to consider the entrepreneur as the appropriate unit of analysis rather than simply the firm although this study focused on habitual founders of businesses the theoretical section of the study also identified other types of habitual entrepreneurs such as serial corporate entrepreneurs and serial management buy out and buy in cases these other types of habitual entrepreneurs would appear to warrant further analysis the findings of this study have a number of implications for practitioners especially venture capitalists the absence of significant performance differences between novice and habitual entrepreneurs which is consistent with the results from other studies emphasizes the need for venture capitalists screening potential investees not to rely solely on previous experience the study also has implications for policy makers especially with respect to decisions concerning the allocation of resources to assist nascent entrepreneurs novice entrepreneurs and habitual entrepreneurs the similarities in business performance among novice serial and portfolio entrepreneurs suggests that policy makers need to be careful in targeting scarce resources most notably targeting resources to encourage talented nascent entrepreneurs to become novice entrepreneurs may offer returns which are at least as good as targeting resources to more experienced entrepreneurs

novice serial and portfolio entrepreneur behaviour and contributions policy makers and practitioners are considering whether to allocate resources towards portfolio and serial entrepreneurs as well as the provision of additional initiatives to increase the pool of novice entrepreneurs to inform this policy debate univariate statistical tests were used to test for differences between 354 firms owned by novice serial and portfolio entrepreneurs in scotland also univariate tests were conducted to compare responses made by pairwise groups of entrepreneurs no significant differences were detected between the three types of entrepreneurs with regard to several entrepreneur and firm demographic characteristics additional analysis revealed that portfolio entrepreneurs have more diverse experiences and more resources than serial or novice entrepreneurs on average portfolio entrepreneurs appear to offer more attractive growth prospects than other entrepreneurs

after the exit acquisitions entrepreneurial recycling and regional economic development mason c m and harrison r t 2006 after the exit acquisitions entrepreneurial recycling and regional economic development regional studies 40 55 73 most studies of the impact of mergers and acquisitions suggest they have a detrimental impact on economic development in peripheral regions over the longer term however such assessments fail to consider the post acquisition behaviour of the cashed out entrepreneurs it is argued here that acquisition triggers a process of entrepreneurial recycling in which the entrepreneurs use their newly acquired wealth allied to the experience they have accumulated to engage in other entrepreneurial activities notably starting new business ventures and investing in other businesses as business angels or venture capitalists case studies of five scottish technology based firms that were acquired by non uk companies illustrate this process when entrepreneurial recycling is taken into account the overall impact of acquisition on regional economic development

effects of government spending on private investment this paper investigates the effects of military and non military public expenditures on gross private investment using cointegration and error correction analysis the latter type of public spending is disagreggated into expenditures of infrastructure consumption and other general government expenditures the empirical evidence from four emerging european countries namely greece ireland portugal and spain suggests that in some cases public capital spending stimulates investment while in others it depresses it also the results tentatively indicate that defence spending exerts no influence on private investment thus adding to the ongoing controversy of the economic effects of military spending

innovative opportunity pursuit human capital and business ownership experience in an emerging region evidence from ghana this study explores whether an entrepreneur s ability to assemble and leverage human capital particularly specific human capital relating to prior business ownership experience is associated with seven types of product and work practices innovation in an emerging region namely ghana logistic regression estimation revealed that portfolio entrepreneurs were more likely than novice entrepreneurs to report innovation tried multinomial logistic regression analysis revealed that portfolio entrepreneurs were more likely than other entrepreneurs to report innovation tried and introduced if the goals of policy are to increase the quality of new business start ups and maximize investment returns there is a case to target assistance to portfolio entrepreneurs

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

growth diversification and business group formation in entrepreneurial firms recent empirical research has demonstrated that the growth process of entrepreneurial firms is frequently achieved through the formation of business groups i e a set of companies run by the same entrepreneur or entrepreneurial team this has been hypothesised as result of a growth process by diversification of the original activity this entrepreneurial growth process offers an alternative explanation for the formation of business groups than that arising from managerial efficiency and expediency the main aim of the article is to explore group formation through entrepreneurial diversification using a sample of high growth entrepreneurial firms the analysis demonstrates that the running of a group of companies by the same entrepreneur is not only induced by the geographical extension of their operation and by diversification but also by the differentiation policy aimed at serving different market segments within the same sector this seems to contrast with the diversification policy and organisational setting of large managerial firms

inheriting knowledge and sustaining relationships what stimulates the innovative performance of small software firms in the netherlands abstract previous studies showed that firms established by experienced founders have higher survival rates and employment growth but the potential effect of pre entry experiences on innovation remains unclear using an original dataset we examine the effect of founder s experiences the relationship with the founder s previous employer and spatial proximity to the previous workplace on the innovative performance of small software firms in the netherlands apart from entrepreneurial experiences the results suggest no effect of pre entry experiences continued contacts with the founder s previous employer appear to limit the firm s innovative performance but firms do benefit from being established near the previous workplace

do public investment and fdi crowd in or crowd out private domestic investment in malaysia motivated by the concern of a persistent decline in total investment in malaysia during the post crisis era this article examines the long run relationship between private domestic investment pdi public investment and foreign direct investment fdi in malaysia using multivariate cointegration techniques the results indicate a fairly robust cointegrated relationship between these variables during the period 1960 to 2003 both public investment and fdi are found to be complementary to rather than competing with pdi

why and how to differentiate in claims problems an axiomatic approach abstract in a bankruptcy situation individuals are not equally affected since each one has its own specific characteristics these aspects cannot be ignored and may justify an allocation bias in favor of or against some individuals this paper develops a theory of differentiation in claims problems that considers not only the vector of claims but also some justified differentiating criteria based on other characteristics wealth net income gdp etc accordingly we propose some progressive transfers from richer to poorer claimants with the purpose of distributing the damage as evenly as possible finally we characterize our solution by means of the lorenz criterion endogenous convex combinations between solutions are also considered

a theoretical analysis of optimal financing strategies for different types of capital constrained entrepreneurs in this paper we compare two alternative financing strategies that capital constrained entrepreneurs can adopt they can either wait until they raised enough money to complete their project the more conservative strategy or use limited resources to achieve some intermediate milestone before contacting large outside investors such as venture capitalists the more adventurous strategy we examine how the choice of financing strategy is affected by entrepreneurial types life style serial and pure profit maximizing entrepreneur we show that specific entrepreneurial characteristics may ultimately affect the shape of firms as they may pursue different strategies to achieve similar goals the paper generates a number of empirical predictions on security design the interplay between angel and venture capital finance and the professionalization of the venture capital market c 2006 elsevier inc all rights reserved

reassesing portfolio entrepreneurship portfolio entrepreneurship that is the simultaneous ownership of several businesses is becoming an important theme in the small business research literature to date however there have been few dedicated empirical investigations of the phenomenon this article analyses research on portfolio entrepreneurship that has been derived from a wide range of subject literatures including economic sociology cultural anthropology and agricultural economics the aim is to provide a deeper understanding of the motivations for portfolio entrepreneurship approaches and the processes associated with it