The probability that actors in economic relationships break rules increases with the profits they thus expect to earn. It decreases with the probability and level of short - and long-term losses resulting from disclosure. It also decreases with the level of social context factors and intrinsic...

Very little is known about the effectiveness of SME policies, and a careful look at thestructure, mechanisms and incentives provided by these policies suggest caution in theirimplementation and, most importantly, the need to carefully and closely monitor their results.This paper relies on the...

We introduce a taxonomy that classifies industries using three criteria: net growth in thenumber of firms; the interrelationship between firm entry and firm exit; and the degree of urbanbiasin industry growth. We show that in 9 of 15 two-digit NAICS industries investigated, thereis evidence of...

Business support policies designed to raise productivity and employment are commonworldwide, but rigorous micro-econometric evaluation of their causal effects is rare. Weexploit multiple changes in the area-specific eligibility criteria for a major program to supportmanufacturing jobs...

This paper provides unheard direct evidence that comparisons exert a significant effect onsubjective well-being. It also evaluates the relative importance of different types ofbenchmarks...

This note investigates the effects of the education level, product market rigidities andemployment protection legislation on growth. It exploits macro-panel data for OECDcountries...

We use data from over 20,000 firms in 60 countries to identify constraints on the growth offirms. We interpret managers´ answers to survey questions on the extent to which variousaspects of their external environment inhibit the performance of their firm as measuring theshadow cost of...

We analyze a large stratified random sample of firms that provide us with measures ofperformance and each firm’s top manager’s perception of the severity of businessenvironment constraints faced by his/her firm. Unlike most existing studies that rely onexternal and aggregated proxy measures of...

Questioning the underlying assumptions of the process of creative destruction, weconceptualize an alternative process of creative construction that may characterizethe dynamics between entrants and incumbents. We discuss the underlyingmechanism of knowledge spillover strategic entrepreneurship...

This paper investigates whether the presence of ambitious entrepreneurs is a more important determinant of national economic growth than entrepreneurial activity in general. We use data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor to test the extent to which high growth ambitions of entrepreneurs...