4 research outputs found
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Essays on the Economics of Entrepreneurship
This thesis examines the role of economic markets and agents in promoting entrepreneurship, and their impact on innovation. The first chapter focuses on small business creation within the context of the United States economy, while the second chapter looks at returns to high-technology entrepreneurship internationally. Chapter 1 examines the impact of economic downturns on entrepreneurship in the United States by illustrating the direct link between the labor market and self-employment sector. When conditions in the labor market deteriorate for certain groups of individuals they are more likely to become entrepreneurs. This chapter shows that while African-American (henceforth Black) entrepreneurship rates have hovered around one-third that of the Caucasian (henceforth White) rate across all industries since 1910, Blacks are significantly more likely than Whites to become entrepreneurs, thereby narrowing the racial entrepreneurship gap. This phenomenon is accompanied by a widening of the racial wage gap - a 1 percent increase in state level unemployment causes Black wages to fall by 5 percent while nominal White wages remain unchanged. This is not a result of a compositional change in the labor force or industry specific shocks and the estimates are robust to an IV approach. This chapter next shows that discrimination reduces the demand for Black labor, resulting in the decrease of Black wages. Black wages fall more sharply with higher unemployment in states with higher racial prejudice compared to that in states with lower racial prejudice. As Black business income does not show corresponding cyclicality these empirical facts suggest that falling wages alter the payoffs from wage employment relative to self-employment, incentivizing Blacks to start businesses. Black businesses started in recessions do not differ from their White counterparts in income generated, incorporation rates or duration of survival. Moreover, it is the higher-ability Blacks who become business owners in recessions, suggesting that these ventures are voluntary and not the result of job termination. These findings show that Blacks do not differ from Whites in entrepreneurial ability, but face high barriers to entry into entrepreneurship and only cross these barriers when incentives change. Chapter 2 examines the role played by economic agents and ownership structures in creating incentives for high-technology entrepreneurship. The goal of high-technology entrepreneurship is to go public through initial public offers (IPO). Going public eases access to finance and rewards entrepreneurs for innovation. This chapter examines the links between the corporate ownership structures of an economy, focusing in particular on business groups, and the degree of average underpricing associated with IPOs. This approach allows for an exploratory look at the effects of market competition, information asymmetry, power and conflicts of interest on IPO pricing. Using a cross-country analysis based on two independent data sets, the chapter shows that the amount of money left on the table for investors decreases with the degree of concentration of ownership within the economy. The greater the degree of separation between control and equity ownership, the smaller the average IPO underpricing. These findings are viewed as supporting evidence for IPO pricing theories based on share allocation, social control and power
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Sink or Swim: The Role of Workplace Context in Shaping Career Advancement and Human-Capital Development
We develop and test predictions on how early-career challenges arising from the workplace context affect short- and long-term career advancement of individuals. Typically an organization’s decision to deploy a manager to one of several possible contexts is endogenous to unobservable factors, and selection makes it challenging to disentangle the effect of workplace context on individual career advancement. We work around this problem by studying an organization, the Indian Administrative Services, which deploys entry-level managers quasi-randomly across India. We find that managers deployed to more challenging contexts early in their careers experience faster career advancement in the short term. We present suggestive evidence that this is because challenging contexts provide managers more opportunities to develop skills (“crucible experiences”) and a greater motivation to relocate out of the challenging context. We also find that managers deployed to a challenging context early in their careers continue to experience faster advancement in the long term, suggesting that initial deployment to a challenging context is associated with human capital development. Managers initially deployed to more challenging contexts were not, however, more likely to break into the upper echelons of the organization
Sink or Swim: The Role of Workplace Context in Shaping Career Advancement and Human-Capital Development
Purification and Characterization of a Trehalase–Invertase Enzyme with Dual Activity from Candida Utilis
Trehalose and sucrose, two important anti-stress non-reducing natural disaccharides, are catabolized by
two enzymes, namely trehalase and invertase respectively. In this study, a 175 kDa enzyme protein active
against both substrates was purified from wild type Candida utilis and characterized in detail. Substrate
specificity assay and activity staining revealed the enzyme to be specific for both sucrose and trehalose.
The ratio between trehalase and invertase activity was found to be constant at 1:3.5 throughout the
entire study. Almost 40-fold purification and 30% yield for both activities were achieved at the final step
of purification. The presence of common enzyme inhibitors, thermal and pH stress had analogous effects
on its trehalase and invertase activity. Km values for two activities were similar while Vmax and Kcat also
differed by a factor of 3.5. Competition plot for both substrates revealed the two activities to be occurring
at the single active site. N-terminal sequencing and MALDI-TOF data analysis revealed higher similarity of
the purified protein to previously known neutral trehalases. While earlier workers mentioned independent
purification of neutral trehalase or invertase from different sources, the present study reports the
purification of a single protein showing dual activity