Ð In the 1990s, parts of the state bureaucracy in China have been setting up new pro®tseeking, risk-taking businesses. Some of these businesses are entrepreneurial rather than rentseeking, and are an unplanned and unanticipated development in China's market-oriented economic reforms. What are the lessons of this phenomenon for the developing world? State entrepreneurialism may create problems s...

We investigate regional differences of the effect of new business formation on employment growth in West Germany. We find an inverse ‘u’-shaped relationship between the level of start-up activity and employment change. The main variables that shape the employment effects of new businesses in a region are population density, the share of medium level skilled workers, the proportion of Research a...

Does entrepreneurial optimism affect the credit availability to small firms and their cost of financing? Using a large sample of U.S. small businesses and a new measure of optimism, we find that higher levels of optimism result in significantly higher leverage. In addition, we find that firms with optimistic entrepreneurs tend to use more short-term debt. We do not find evidence that banks curt...

the asia-pacific region generates over half of global economic activity (54.2%) and about 43.7% of global trade, and is the most dynamic region in the global economy. at the core of this is an increasingly dynamic, vibrant and entrepreneurial small-medium sized enterprise sector. advances in information and communications technology, market liberalisation and moves towards closer regional econo...

This article examines the business choices made by independent family farmers, when confronting the need to diversify away from traditional agricultural activities by starting farm-based tourism businesses. Based on interviews with farmers and drawing upon the concept of authenticity, the article explores the farmer’s conceptions of self and identity. In so doing, it addresses the dilemmas faci...

Many young people believe that once they are given enough resources, they could easily establish and successfully run a business enterprise. So, they perceive that the major obstacle to their entrepreneurial activity is the lack of funding. Although the lack of collateral prevents many young people from startingup their own businesses, the experience, however, shows that this is only a part of ...

Excess entry – or the high failure rate of market-entry decisions – is often attributed to overconfidence exhibited by entrepreneurs. We show analytically that whereas excess entry is an inevitable consequence of imperfect assessments of entrepreneurial skill, it does not imply overconfidence. Judgmental fallibility leads to excess entry even when everyone is underconfident. Self-selection impl...