1,721,055 research outputs found
First Author Determinants: An Empirical Analysis
Full text linkAlphabetic name ordering on multi-authored academic papers_new, which is the convention in theeconomics discipline and various other disciplines, is to the advantage of people whose lastname initials are placed early in the alphabet. As it turns out, Professor A, who has been afirst author more often than Professor Z, will have published more articles and experienced afaster growth rate over the course of her career as a result of reputation and visibility.Moreover, authors know that name ordering matters and indeed take ordering seriously:Several characteristics of an author group composition determine the decision to deviate fromthe default alphabetic name order to a significant extent
Who Starts a Business and who is Self-Employed in Germany
Full text linkBased on representative data, the German Micro-Census, we provide an overview of the development of self-employment and entrepreneurship in Germany between 1991 and 2011, the first two decades after reunification. We investigate the socio-economic background of these individuals, their education, previous employment status, and their income level. We observe a unique increase in self-employment in Germany by 40 percent which can partly be attributed to the transformation process of East Germany and to the shift to the service sector. We notice a yearly start-up rate of 1 percent among the working population (almost 20 percent of them being re-starters), a decision that pays for the majority of individuals in terms of income. Contrary to other countries, in Germany there is a positive relationship between educational levels and the probability of starting a business.Entrepreneurship, Self-Employment, Start-ups, Germany
Diversity and team performance: A series of field experiments
Full text linkThis dissertation studies the impact of diversity on team performance using a series of field experiments in which teams start up and manage real companies under identical circumstances. Exogenous variation in - otherwise random - team composition is imposed by assigning individuals to teams based on their gender, ethnicity or cognitive ability. The setting of these field experiments closely resembles that of (business) management practices in the longer run where tasks are diverse and involve complex decision-making. Evidence from this kind of experiments potentially contributes to the effective composition of teams in organizations. The results of this dissertation demonstrate that diversity in gender, ethnicity and cognitive ability has substantial and non-monotonic effects on the performance of teams. Various underlying mechanisms are explored to explain why teams of distinct degrees of diversity perform differently
Entrepreneurship, teams and sustainability: A series of field experiments
Full text linkThis dissertation reports the results from three field experiments that were conducted within the setting of one of the leading, internationally renowned entrepreneurship education programs for primary schools called BizWorld. The first field experiment evaluates the program’s effectiveness in terms of the development of entrepreneurship knowledge and a set of non-cognitive skills relevant for entrepreneurial activity. The results indicate that the program has a robust positive effect on non-cognitive entrepreneurial skills. The aim of the second experiment is to test how skill composition affects team performance and whether (a lack of) individual balanced skills can be substituted by combining the skills of various specialists within one team. The results show that balanced skills are beneficial to team performance, and that it is hard to effectively combine different specialists within one team. The third experiment investigates how to induce sustainable behavior in a productive setting. The results indicate that, in this setting, (financial) incentives are required to effectively motivate sustainable behavior
Heterogeneity in response to incentives: Evidence from field data
Full text linkThis dissertation explores whether observable individual characteristics such as gender, level of education and occupation are good predictors of people’s responses to competitive and cooperative incentive schemes. This inquiry is motivated by the belief that such characteristics can serve as proxies for the unobservable personality traits and attitudes that actually influence the reaction to incentives. Results presented in this dissertation complement related laboratory experiments by discussing evidence that is based on field experiments as well as naturally occurring data. The studies discussed in this dissertation suggest that there are systematic differences between individuals’ reactions to incentives, and such heterogeneities have economically important consequences. Consequently, by taking observable dimensions of heterogeneity between individuals into account we can improve our predictions of people’s responses to incentives and thus design more efficient incentive schemes. Moreover, this dissertation highlights the importance of complementing laboratory experiments with scientific projects based on field data
Initial Capital Constraints Hinder Entrepreneurial Venture Performance: An empirical analysis
Full text linkA novel method is applied to evaluate the effect of capital constraints on entrepreneurial performance on a panel of 1,000 Dutch entrepreneurs. We find that initial capital constraints hinder entrepreneurs in their performance, even when we control for various human capital and other factors that might affect both performance and credit scoring outcomes. We use a direct individual indicator variable for initial capital constraints. Previous research with the same objective used indirect indicators of wealth, inheritances or windfall gains, where it remains unknown whether the entrepreneur indeed suffered from capital constraints. This drawback is not attached to our (neither perfect) approach so that policy implications will become more evident
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