Analyzing a cross-country panel of 16 OECD countries from 2002 to 2005, we find that higher unemployment benefits crowd out nascent entrepreneurial activity. Our results hold regardless of entrepreneurial motivation (necessity or opportunity) and entrepreneurial type (imitative or innovative).

We are currently investigating genetic influences on self-employment in an international research consortium using genome-wide association studies (GWAS). By meta-analysing results from numerous independent samples we address identification issues arising from multiple testing. To our knowledge,...

While it is generally acknowledged that entrepreneurship as well as export activity may both be important strategies for achieving national economic growth, it has remained unclear how export activity among new ventures is related to economic growth. This paper investigates whether the presence...

Services constitute a major part of the economy, and, contrary to popular believe, service firms do innovate. In this paper I take a closer look at one aspect of innovation in services: appropriability. I discuss the different elements that are possibly of importance for appropriability, and...

Replication is conducting a study in another case (or population) in order to assess whether a research finding from previous studies can be confirmed. The aim of replication is to assess the generalizability of a theoretical claim and the “research finding” that is (or is not) confirmed in...

Prior research has identified individual characteristics that distinguish business owners from non-business owners. We tested our contention that not every successful business owner can be characterized by such typical “entrepreneurial” characteristics. Multiple Analysis of Variance (MANOVA)...

The contemporary rise of China in the new geo-economy is increasingly pressurising the spatial distribution of financial activity in mainland China and Hong Kong. With the re-emergence of Shanghai, many people foresee the furture demise of Hong Kong as the most important financial centre for the...

In this article, contrary to popular belief, it is argued on the basis of Transaction Cost Economics that consumers will become dependent subcontractors on electronic markets. Consumers invest time and effort building up a relation with a producer or e-tailer; an investment that is...

This article addresses the influence costs problem in the governance structure ‘agribusiness cooperative.’ Influence costs are higher in cooperatives than in investor-oriented firms due to the unique governance structure of the former. Hypotheses are formulated and tested regarding the...

This study empirically investigates factors that influence overoptimism across nascent entrepreneurs. We distinguish between two main groups of determinants (information, motivation) and three types of overoptimism (income, psychological burden, leisure time). Findings indicate that...