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...

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...

We test whether managerial human capital has a first order effect on the performance and growth of small enterprises in emerging markets. In a randomized control trial in Puebla, Mexico, we randomly assigned 150 out of 432 small and medium size enterprises to receive subsidized consulting...

This paper analyzes the impact of foreign presence on growth and survival of domestic firms. I separate the two opposing effects of foreign presence: a negative crowding out and positive technology spillovers and further analyze whether the crowding out effect is dynamic, i.e. domestic firms cut...

This paper critically considers ‘additional' and ‘instrumental' explanations that economists have recently suggested in order to reduce the understanding of CSR within the limits of standard economic theorizing, and contrasts them with a ‘constitutive' definition as an extended model of...

This paper uses entrepreneurs' survival expectations around the time of market entry and subsequent venture exits to study entrepreneurial optimism. Using data on a large number of nascent entrepreneurs in the US and start-ups in Finland, we find that new entrepreneurs survival beliefs are on...

This article analyzes the economics of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), as a private response to market imperfections to satisfy social preferences. Depending on whether they affect regulation, competition, or contracts, market imperfections driving CSR decisions are classified in three...

We develop and test a model in which managerial overconfidence offsets the underinvestment problem arising from managerial myopia. Using a three-period investment model in which we capture managerial myopia by hyperbolic discounting, we show that both overconfident owner-managers and...