Risk, balanced skills and entrepreneurship

This paper proposes that risk aversion encourages individuals to invest in balanced skill profiles, making them more likely to become entrepreneurs. By not taking this possible linkage into account, previous research has underestimated the impacts of both risk aversion and balanced skills on the likelihood individuals choose entrepreneurship. Data on Dutch university graduates provide an illustration supporting our contention. We raise the possibility that even risk-averse people might be suited to entrepreneurship; and it may also help explain why prior research has generated somewhat mixed evidence about the effects of risk aversion on selection into entrepreneurship

Does Foreign Direct Investment Stimulate New Firm Creation? In Search of Spillovers through Industrial and Geographical Linkages

This paper examines the spillover effects of inward foreign direct investment (FDI) on the entrepreneurial activities of new firm creation through both industrial and geographical linkages. Using a dataset of 44,434 newly created small firms in 234 regions of South Korea in 2000–2004, this study finds that while the spillover impacts of FDI in the low-tech industry are positive and significant across almost all four possible combinations of the intra-/inter-regional and intra-/inter-sectoral channels, the impacts in the high-tech industry are largely intra-sectoral within the host region and across neighboring regions. Moreover, all statistically significant spillover effects follow an inverted ‘U’-shaped curvilinear trend

Investment in new foreign subsidiaries under receding perception of uncertainty

Research on foreign direct investment has focused considerable attention on the moment of market entry, but less on the dynamics of investment in the post-entry phase. This paper centres the influence of uncertainty on investment, and develops a growth options model to explain the sequence of investment in new foreign subsidiaries. In a learning process that starts at entry, investors perceive receding levels of uncertainty and shift their reason for investment from option values towards net present values. The findings of a panel study of 634 German subsidiaries support the propositions and reveal the potential of the real options approach to improve the understanding of internationalisation processes. Journal of International Business Studies (2008) 39, 370–386. doi:10.1057/palgrave.jibs.8400362

Research involving limited dependent variables: issues in the literature and recommendations for improvement

Despite previous recommendations for improvement, a literature review reveals a minority of recent papers in management journals provide correct interpretations of regression coefficients for analyses of limited dependent variables. Furthermore, the use of marginal effects to interpret relationships has resulted in confusing and inaccurate conclusions. This paper recommends simpler and more informative alternatives to the calculation and reporting of marginal effects. In particular, two key recommendations involve choosing and explicitly stating a suitable measurement scale for dependent variables and explicitly stating whether relationships with independent variables are multiplicative or additive effects. These recommendations for reporting hypotheses, analysis and interpretations will not only improve the precision of future research but also provide superior interpretations of past literature. Significantly, this paper shows how standard regression coefficients can be used to interpret relationships between variables for any values of all variables. Other approaches such as the recommended inclusion of marginal effects and plots requires fixing other variables to specific values (such as their mean value) and so are of less value to readers