The Benefits of Being Economics Professor A (and not Z)

Alphabetic name ordering on multi-authored academic papers, which is the convention in the economics discipline and various other disciplines, is to the advantage of people whose last name initials are placed early in the alphabet. As it turns out, Professor A, who has been a first 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 from the default alphabetic name order to a significant extent.performance measurement, incentives, economists, name ordering

Who Values the Status of the Entrepreneur?

Parker and Van Praag (2009) showed, based on theory, that the group status of the profession 'entrepreneurship' shapes people's occupational preferences and thus their choice behavior. The current study focuses on the determinants and consequences of the group status of a profession, entrepreneurship in particular. If the group status of entrepreneurship is related to individual choice behavior, it is policy relevant to better understand this relationship and the determinants of the status of the entrepreneur. For reasons outlined in the introduction, this study focuses on (800) students in the Netherlands. We find that the status of occupations is mostly determined by the required level of education, the income level to be expected and respect. Furthermore, our results imply that entrepreneurship is associated with hard work, high incomes, but little power and education. Moreover, we find evidence that individual characteristics, such as entrepreneurship experience, vary systematically with the perceived status of occupations, thereby contributing ammunition to a fundamental discussion in the literature. Finally, we find a strong association between the perceived status of the entrepreneur and the estimated likelihood and willingness to become an entrepreneur.entrepreneurship, self-employment, occupational choice, occupational status, group status, peer group effects

Initial Capital Constraints Hinder Entrepreneurial Venture Performance: An empirical analysis

A 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.entrepreneurship, small business founders, success, venture performance, wealth/capital/borrowing constraint

The individual welfare function of income: a lognormal distribution function?

The procedure used by Van Praag and Kapteyn to test the theory that the individual welfare function of income is a lognormal distribution function is critically evaluated. It is shown that random data give the same test results as the income levels actually collected from real consumers. Thus it is doubtful whether Van Praag and Kapteyn's results, even although they are based on data collected from as many as 12000 consumers, provide any support for the lognormal model. It is concluded that more powerful methods are required to test the lognormal model thoroughly

The Connexion Between Old and New Approaches to Financial Satisfaction

In this paper we compare the new satisfaction evaluation approach, developed in the nineties by Oswald, Clark, Blanchflower and others with the older income evaluation (IEQ) approach, developed by Van Praag and Kapteyn in the seventies of the previous century. We find that both approaches yield strikingly similar results with respect to financial satisfaction. The IEQ-approach yields additional insights, but it is not well applicable to other life domains than finance. It is argued that the usual Probit specification implies a specific cardinalization and, consequently, is less ordinal than usually thought. It is shown that the Probit-approach may be replaced by three other equivalent specifications that have some computational and intuitive advantages.financial satisfaction, income evaluation, Probit-models, cardinal utility

The benefits of being economics professor A (and not Z)

Alphabetic name ordering on multi-authored academic papers, which is the convention in the economics discipline and various other disciplines, is to the advantage of people whose last name initials are placed early in the alphabet. As it turns out, Professor A, who has been a first author more often than Professor Z, will have published more articles and experienced a faster 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 from the default alphabetic name order to a significant extent

The More Business Owners the Merrier? The Role of Tertiary Education

Policy in developed countries is often based on the assumption that higher business ownership rates induce economic value. However, not everyone can be a business owner and many labour market participants would contribute more to economic value creation as an employee than a business owner. The implied existence of an ‘optimal’ business ownership rate would thus replace the dictum of ‘the more business owners, the merrier’. We attempt to establish whether there is such an optimal level, while investigating the role of tertiary education. Two findings stand out. First, by estimating extended versions of traditional Cobb Douglas production functions on a sample of 19 OECD countries over the period 1981-2006, we find indeed robust evidence of an optimal business ownership rate. Second, the optimal business ownership rate tends to decrease with participation rates in tertiary education.  

Well-being Inequality and Reference Groups: An Agenda for New Research

In this paper it is argued that subjective well-being of the individual depends on two types of variables. The first type consists of characteristics of the individual himself, such as age, health, income, etc. The second type of variables consists of the characteristics of the individuals belonging to his reference group. The vast literature about happiness, quality of life, and well-being informs us extensively about the effects of objective variables. How the second type affects well-being is much less investigated. It is argued that the concept of well-being inequality cannot be properly defined without taking the referencing process into account. The reference effect depends on how frequently individuals compare with others and on the degree of social transparency in society. We attempt to give a structural embedding of the idea of reference groups in SWB-models. In this paper we employ the reference-extended model for incorporating in happiness studies the concept of inequality in happiness or SWB. Finally, we plead for an extension of the present happiness paradigm by setting up a new additional agenda for empirical research in order to get quantified knowledge about the referencing process. As a first step we suggest a new question module to be included in new survey questionnaires.subjective well-being, happiness, inequality, reference group