• Selected
• Entire List

Abstract:
A venture capitalist faces a trade-off between the extent of managerial advice allocated to each start-up and the total number of firms advised. Diminishing returns to advice per firm call for a larger portfolio. As advice gets diluted, further expansion of the portfolio eventually becomes unprofitable.

Venture capital finance, double-sided moral hazard, company portfolio

Abstract:
Start-up entrepreneurs are often commercially inexperienced. In giving managerial advice, venture capitalists can importantly enhance the success of innovative but highly risky ventures. The supply of experienced venture capitalists is not easily increased, however. When the rate of business formation accelerates, the incumbent venture capitalists tend to include more firms in their portfolio which dilutes the quality of advice, making project risks excessively high in the short-run. The supply of advisory capacity eventually becomes more elastic as new venture capitalists are attracted to the industry. Company portfolios then tend to become more focused again, the quality of advice is restored and the risk of business failure declines.

Venture Capital, Company Portfolio, Managerial Advice, Economic Rents

Abstract:
We consider duopolists innovating and producing a good that is subject to network externalities, so that the reservation price for a consumer increases with aggregate consumption. The post-innovation network consists of two compatible sub-networks, with increased network valuation of the new product. When the non-innovating firm enjoys a larger profit than when neither firm innovates, free-riding on the winner's network as a public good arises. With such a network spillover, duopolists may underinvest in innovation.

Network Goods, Free Riding, Innovation, Telecommunications

Abstract:
We find evidence in the OECD cross-country data to support the Knightian view that non-diversifiable economic risks shape equilibrium entrepreneurship in an occupational choice model. Differential social insurance of entrepreneurial and labor risk is found to be statistically significant and detrimental to entrepreneurship. The crowding-out effect of public production of private goods on entrepreneurship dominates the crowding-in effect of public production of public goods in the OECD data. Weak evidence is found for the proposition that the rate of entrepreneurship is related to the degree of income inequality and to the union power in the economy. The results also suggest that a high living standard has a detrimental effect on self-employment.

Entrepreneurship, risks, the welfare state, social risk insurance, crowding-out

Abstract:
This paper shows that labor market institutions are important for the formation of new enterprises. The effects of labor market institutions on entrepreneurship, wage determination, and firm size are analysed analytically and illustrated numerically. The main result is that an increase in union power reduces the equilibrium rate of entrepreneurship and reduces the average size of enterprises.

Entrepreneurship, labor market institutions, occupational choice, unions

Abstract:
Early-stage uncertainty makes the initial cost of capital greater than the expansion-stage one. Tax effects on enterprise formation, entrepreneurial effort and quality, and on capital costs are derived. For an incorporated enterprise (i) the entrepreneur's ability threshold rises with the tax rate of the corporate form, (ii) the initial cost of capital due to a dividend tax is above the old view double-tax one, (iii) the start-up investment is not affected by undervaluation, but the discouragement engendered by dividend taxation is compensated by realization-based capital gains tax, (iv) with undervaluation, the expansion-stage cost of capital corresponds to the Johansson-Samuelson tax which is lower than the new view suggests, (v) without undervaluation, the dividend tax boosts expansion investment.

taxation of start-up enterprises

Abstract:
Consider a public project which produces a consumption good and which benefits future generations. Let a conventional cost-benefit analysis find that it gives higher benefits than projects it would displace in the private sector. Voters may nevertheless oppose the public project: the combination of a desire to control bequests and the lack of control over who gets benefits from a public project makes the public project unattractive. In contrast, private projects have owners, allowing parents to control whether their children will receive the benefits from such projects. Parents can therefore better influence the behavior of their children when they have the option of giving the children title to private projects.

Public Projects, Cost-benefit Analysis

Abstract:
This paper identifies several distortions which create barriers to entrepreneurship. First, in addition to the innate entry cost, there are entry costs caused by regulation. Second, union wage policies raise the opportunity cost of entrepreneurship. Third, inefficiencies in the transmission of tacit knowledge between generations of entrepreneurs can arise: with access to within-family ownership transfer, the outside market for entrepreneurship operates as a lemon's market. This problem becomes relevant when the economic life of a business idea exceeds the active life of an entrepreneur.

barriers to entrepreneurship, tacit knowledge, occupational choice

Abstract:
This paper identifies several distortions that create barriers to entrepreneurship. First, in addition to the innate entry cost, there are entry costs caused by regulation. Second, union wage policies raise the opportunity cost of entrepreneurship. Third, inefficiencies in the transmission of tacit knowledge between generations of entrepreneurs can arise: with access to within-family ownership transfer, the outside market for entrepreneurship operates as a lemon's market. This problem becomes relevant when the economic life of a business idea exceeds the active life of an entrepreneur.

barriers to entrepreneurship, tacit knowledge

Abstract:
Corporate success often resembles a snowball. We show how initial luck in hiring talented people, the resulting technological advantage, superior corporate culture, and status-seeking by workers can make small initial differences generate large differences over time.

industry equilibrium, initial luck, status effects

Abstract:
The paper shows how entrepreneurial taxes interact with the career choice of individuals, the quality of entrepreneurs, and their effort and investments. It is particularly relevant to differentiate the early effects on start-up enterprises with substantial uncertainty from the tax effects on mature firms where the uncertainty is resolved. That is why the neutrality results of dividend taxation from mature company theory do not carry over to start-up enterprises. The Nordic dual model encourages (discourages) the establishment of new enterprises by entrepreneurs who anticipate high (low) profitability.

dual income taxation, enterprise taxes

Abstract:
The paper introduces a model of enterprise formation in a unionized economy with labor protection and wage bargaining. Enterprise formation is subject to future market risk and is shaped by labor market institutions in the post-entry stage. The predictions of the model are tested in cross-section OECD data on 19 economies over 1978-98. Support is found for the view that enterprise formation is adversely affected by economic risks, unemployment compensation, union power, and labor protection variables.

Entrepreneurship, labor protection, labor unions

Abstract:
Consider a principal who appoints an agent. Let the agent potentially serve for a sufficiently long time that one principal is replaced by another over this period. Suppose also that the quality of the agent appointed increases with the effort the incumbent principal devotes to hiring. Then the quality of the appointment may increase with the length of the agent's term. Moreover, policies such as mandatory retirement which increase a prinicpal's concern for output after he leaves office, may induce better hiring.

Hiring tenure, quality of appointment

Abstract:
Some markets are prone to develop shadow transactions for the purpose of tax avoidance. Moral sentiments control the allocation of consumers between the legal and illicit markets. Such sentiments include self-esteem and social disapproval. The market solution leads to fiscal externality resulting from tax avoidance and highlights the conflict between private opportunism and collective values. Shadow markets may, however, enhance consumer welfare by limiting the pricing power of firms and by controlling tax collection. The paper develops a model of endogenous segmentation of markets between moral and immoral behavior. The legal producer can price the self-esteem of honest people, who can blackmail the legal producer with their option of visiting the illicit market. The model has implications for monetary economics: moral sentiments, tax rates, illegal transactions, and probability of being caught become relevant for the demand for money.

moral sentiments, shadow economy, welfare

Abstract:
This paper develops a theory of consumer boycotts. Some consumers care not only about the products they buy but also about whether the firm behaves ethically. Other consumers do not care about the behavior of the firm but yet may like to give the impression of being ethical consumers. Consequently, to affect a firm's ethical behavior, moral consumers refuse to buy from an unethical firm. Consumers who do not care about ethical behavior may join the boycott to (falsely) signal that they do care. In the firm's choice between ethical and unethical behavior, the optimality of mixed and pure strategies depends on the cost of behaving ethically. In particular, when the cost is (relatively) low, ethical behavior arises from a prisoners' dilemma as the firm's optimal strategy.

firm's ethical code, consumer morality, boycotts

Abstract:
We consider a firm that is subject to employment protection laws that limit the firm's ability to fire labor. In particular, we suppose that though a firm which shuts down can fire all its workers, it may fire no fewer. Compared to a firm that is subject to no employment protection, a firm constrained in firing will prefer a risk-free project over a risky one, but may prefer the riskier of two risky projects.

Project Choice, Labor Protection

Abstract:
This paper shows that taxes which are understood to be neutral with respect to the marginal investment decisions may be distortionary with respect to entrepreneurial decisions. In particular, we apply an intertemporal model to show that a comprehensive income tax is distortionary unless all kinds of income are subject to the same tax rate and a worker's option to become an entrepreneur is accounted for. Similarly, the harsh condition of a uniform tax rate is necessary but not sufficient under "new view" dividend tax, cash flow tax, and ACE tax, so that the occupational choice is not distorted. In any case, informational problems may arise and lead to distortive effects.

ACE tax, cash flow tax, dividend tax, Johansson-Samuelson theorem, real options

Abstract:
We consider taxation by a Leviathan government and by a utilitarian government in the presence of heterogeneous locations within a country, when migration from one country to another is and is not possible. In a closed economy, a utilitarian government may transfer income from the poor to the rich to reduce rents earned by absentee landlords. When the rich are mobile, a tax on them induces little migration because the tax will reduce the rents on land inhabited by the rich. A race to the bottom need not appear.

taxes, land rents, property values, migration, redistribution

Abstract:
We consider taxation by a utilitarian government in the presence of heterogeneous locations within a country. We show that a utilitarian government never equalizes after-tax incomes, even when it can impose group-specific lump-sum taxes. If migration is impossible, a utilitarian government may even transfer income from the poor to the rich, reducing the rents earned by absentee landlords. The redistributive tax on the rich may be higher or lower when the rich can migrate than when they cannot.

taxes, land rents, property values, migration, redistribution

Abstract:
The paper shows that uninformed finance gives rise to excessive entry, both in human-capital-intensive and in conventional industries when the financial institutions cannot identify the entrepreneurial talent. Introduction of informed capital (eg venture capital finance) with superior screening ability results in an institutional equilibrium with efficiency gains in human-capital industries. Contrary to received wisdom, the institutional equilibrium with informed capital is characterised by more limited entry to an industry, which requires highly talented human capital. Unexpectedly, the total welfare effect is ambiguous, as the allocation of non-informed capital is now less efficient in the conventional industry. The institutional equilibrium is shaped by investors' risk preferences, costs of establishing uninformed and informed capital, and the initial distribution to talent in the economy.

allocation of talent, asymmetric information, financial institutions, venture capital, institutional equilibrium

Abstract:
This paper develops a theory of consumer boycotts. Some consumers care not only about the products they buy but also about whether the firm behaves ethically. Other consumers do not care about the behavior of the firm but yet may like to give the impression of being ethical consumers. Consequently, to affect a firm's ethical behavior, moral consumers refuse to buy from an unethical firm. Consumers who do not care about ethical behavior may join the boycott to (falsely) signal that they do care. In the firm's choice between ethical and unethical behavior, the optimality of mixed and pure strategies depends on the cost of behaving ethically. In particular, when the cost is (relatively) low, ethical behavior arises from a prisoners' dilemma as the firm's optimal strategy.

firm's ethical code, consumer morality, boycotts

Abstract:
It may be in the interest of low-ability individuals to subsidize the education of high-ability individuals. Sufficient conditions are surprisingly mild: positive externalities in education and complementarity in production between human capital and labor supllied by the low-ability individuals. However, tax competition and the free mobility of the educated give rise to time-inconsistency and free-riding problems which render such a social contract infeasible and result in a subotimally low investment in education.

Externalities in education, complementarity, social contract, tax competition

Abstract:
The current paper reconsiders the theory of corporate investment under price uncertainty. The assumption that management is a perfect, risk-neutral agent of corporate owners has been relaxed. It is found that the management's limited opportunity to diversify and limited ability to finance consumption by borrowing against human capital creates a mechanism which reinforces the technology effect discussed in the earlier literature calling for more current capital investment essentially functions as a precautionary mechanism for risk-averse management with a preference for prudence in conditions of imperfect spanning. The result is likely to hold under diminishing absolute risk aversion and a diminishing preference for prudence when the management participates in sharing corporate risks. The model can be viewed as marrying the neoclassical theory of investment with the managerial theory of a firm. Its key assumption is the separation of ownership and control in the sense that the shareholders are considered to be unable to evaluate investment projects while the management is.

Abstract:
We analyze the tax effects on a potential firm with an irreversible entry option and subject to risky post-entry earnings. We formulate the problem in terms of optimal stopping and derive both the necessary conditions for optimal entry and the value of the optimal premium by relying on the classical theory of diffusions and the Green representation of the stochastic value functional. We show that to make the entry option invariant with respect to the tax policy when the government owns a call option on a fraction of firm's earnings, the tax allowance has to satisfy a first-order non-linear differential equation. We derive qualitative results for the neutrality of the tax policy. Using standard geometric Brownian motion to model price uncertainty, we provide examples of the requirements for tax invariance. The Johansson-Samuelson theorem is re-examined.