This discussion paper resulted in a publication in the <A HREF="http://personal.vu.nl/b.vander.klaauw/promotions.htm">'Journal of Population Economics'</A>, 2011, 24, 1513-1548. <P> We focus on the dynamic relation between wage increases, promotions and job changes. We relate our empirical analyses to the theoretical model of Gibbons and Waldman (1999). In the...</p></a>

This article investigates empirically whether and to what extent initial capital constraints hinder entrepreneurial performance once the venture has been started. Prior empirical research in this area could investigate this issue only indirectly by lack of data. The key contribution of this...

This paper focuses on a new concern in the small firm’s literature, namely what makes a small firm stay in business for a long time. It reflects a change in economic policy, away from an emphasis on volume of start-ups to an emphasis on quality of start-ups. The basic hypothesis is that...

A recent literature has emerged providing compelling evidence that a major shift in the organization of the developed economies has been taking place: away from what has been characterized as the <I>managed economy</I> towards the <I>entrepreneurial economy</I>. In particular, the empirical evidence provides...</i></i>

This paper examines the relationship between organization contextual variables and humanresource management (HRM) practices in small firms. The proposed model is based on anintegration of theoretical perspectives, including the resource-based approach, institutionaltheory, transaction cost...

We manipulate workers' perceived meaning of a job in a field experiment. Half of the workers are informed that their job is important, the other half are told that their job is of no relevance. Results show that workers exert more effort when meaning is high, corroborating previous findings on...

Baker (2002) has demonstrated theoretically that the quality of performance measures used in compensation contracts hinges on two characteristics: noise and distortion. These criteria, though, will only be useful in practice as long as the noise and distortion of a performance measure can be...

This discussion paper resulted in a publication in the 'Journal of Economics and Management Strategy', forthcoming.<P> Distorted performance measures in compensation contracts elicit suboptimal behavioral responses that may even prove to be dysfunctional (gaming). This paper applies the empirical...</p>

The survey findings indicate the existence of gap between theory and practice of capital budgeting. Standard appraisal methods have shown a wider project value discrepancy, which is beyond and above the contingency limit. In addition, the research has found the growing trend in the use of value...