Many basic economic theories with perfectly functioning markets do not predict the existence of the vast number of microenterprises readily observed across the world. We put forward a model that illuminates why financial and managerial capital constraints may impede experimentation, and thus...

Many basic economic theories with perfectly functioning markets do not predict the existence of the vast number of microenterprises readily observed across the world. We put forward a model that illuminates why financial and managerial capital constraints may impede experimentation, and thus...

We show how financial and managerial constraints impede experimentation and thus limit learning about the profitability of investments. Imperfect information about one's own type, but willingness to experiment to learn one's type, leads to short-run negative expected returns to investments, with...

This paper studies the role of product availability in attracting consumer demand. We start with a newsvendor model, but additionally assume that stockouts are costly to consumers. The seller sets an observable price and an unobservable stocking quantity. Consumers anticipate the likelihood of...

We consider a dynamic market with two firms that sell competing common-value products. The firms offer both products to an infinite set of rational consumers. Each consumer observes a conditionally independent and identically distributed private signal about the product qualities. Consumers...

The basis of competition in today’s marketplace is changing from one based on human labor, to one where the principle source of value creation is an organization’s knowledge, and the organization’s ability to rapidly acquire new knowledge through learning. The rise of the knowledge economy...

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to recent efforts to ground evolutionary theory in economics in the principles of Universal Darwinism. The paper will contrast two views of evolution, based on the Ultra-Darwinian and Naturalist theory of biological evolution, both of which are...

In the vein of evolutionary capabilities theorizing and modeling (Dosi, Nelson & Winter, 2000), this paper tries to contribute some basic rudiments of a process framework of strategic capabilities and opportunities. First, by introducing the concepts of capability space and opportunity space, we...

A stronger long-term orientation is considered a competitive advantage of family firms relative to non-family firms. In this study, we use panel data of U.S. firms and analyze this proposition. Our findings are surprising. Only in when the family is involved in the management of the firm is the...

The Industrial Institute for Economic and Social Research (IUI) was founded in 1939. In less than ten years, IUI grew from a small survey bureau to a leading research institute focused on microeconomic research relevant to industrial development. Based on a number of new commemorative essays and...