Church and State: An Economic Analysis

What purpose is served by a government\u27s protection of religious liberty? Many have been suggested, the most prominent of which center on the protection of freedom of belief and expression. However, since every regulation potentially interferes with religious freedom, it is useful to consider more concrete purposes that could suggest limits on the degree to which religious liberty should be protected. This paper focuses on the concrete economic consequences of state regulation of religion. We examine the effects of state regulation on corruption, economic growth, and inequality. The results suggest that laws and practices burdening religion enhance corruption. Laws burdening religion reduce economic growth and are positively associated with inequality

Process and Dynamics of self-employment of legal and illegal Ukrainian immigrants in London

The paper highlights the process and dynamics of employment of Ukrainian legal and illegal immigrants and barriers for business entry and their sectoral distribution. The study focussed on London examines skills, aspirations and potential of Ukrainian illegal and legal immigrants towards employment and entrepreneurship. This paper explores the Ukrainian people through the investigation of resources they deploy in developing their businesses by using forms of capital framework (Bourdieu, 1983; Nee and Sanders, 2001). The theoretical frame devised for the study is derived from Ram et al (2008) on Somali community and Vershinina et al (2009) on Polish entrepreneurs in Leicester, where both studies took forms of capital approach (Bourdieu, 1983; Nee and Sanders, 2001) and linked motivations for self-employment of these ethnic entrepreneurs to the mixed embeddedness approach (Rath and Kloosterman, 2002). In-depth case studies were undertaken with eleven self-employed Ukrainians legally and illegally operating in London in predominantly construction but also other industries. A snow ball sampling method was used to identify illegal and legal Ukrainians in London similar to approaches used when working with hidden communities (Hamilton, 2006) through an intermediary. Our sample comprises of ten male and one female self-employed workers aged from 25 to 45. The interviews with participants were carried out over the phone, recorded, transcribed and analysed using NVivo, qualitative software package. We found that Ukrainian legal or illegal self-employed individuals were not confined to a niche in the economy, although all started in construction industry due to the availability of work in this sector and reputation East European workers have for being hard-working. When looking at forms of capital Ukrainian respondents mobilise – human, financial, cultural and social – we found that it was not enough only to rely on "social capital" to understand business formation, which is the tendency in ethnic entrepreneurship area. Immigration status has an impact on how well the individuals integrate into host country, and how accessible some forms of capital like cultural and financial are to these individuals. This comparative research provides valuable insights for policy, as there is no estimate of contribution this ethnic group makes to the UK economy, given a large number of immigrants working illegally in the UK. It is clear that all the illegal self-employed individuals who participated in this study say that their prospects of work and ability for business start-up are reliant to a large extent on their ability to legalise. Some of the income generated by these illegal individuals is sent out of the UK to support their families or invest back at home, while some of the income is reinvested in the UK. The paper’s main contributions consist of an innovative deployment of the theoretical models of forms of capital and empirical focus of an ethnic community based in London, which is neglected within current studies of ethnic entrepreneurship. The novelty of this study is the research design that looks at Ukrainian illegal immigrants through the lens of entrepreneurship theory rather than general migration literature.Seedcorn Fund at Faculty of Business and La

Capital structure and firm performance in Nigeria

This paper examines the impact of capital structure on firm performance in Nigeria as well as test the possibility of non-monotonic relationship between capital structure and firm performance based on the prediction of the agency cost theory of capital structure when firm use debt financing excessively. The study used dynamic panel model on panel data of 115 listed non-financial firms in Nigeria. Specifically, the paper employed the two step generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation method that recognizes the persistence of the dependent variable by including its lag value as an explanatory variable in the regression model. The major findings indicate statistical significant relationship exist between capital structure and firm performance particularly when debt financing is moderately employed. However, the paper found evidence of non-monotonic relationship between capital structure and firm performance when firms in Nigeria employed excessive debt financing which impinged on the performance of firms. The findings support the portability of the agency cost theory in the Nigeria context but with caution considering the facts that firms in Nigeria were largely finance through short term debt as against long term debt financing that was assumed in the agency cost theoretical proposition

Methodological issues in studying hidden populations operating in informal economy.

This is the outcome of the project sponsored by CREMEIn this paper the issues in studying hidden populations are discussed with particular focus on methodology used to investigate ethnic minority entrepreneurs who illegally run their businesses in the UK. In this paper, on reflection, we look at what issues should be considered before engaging with such communities, as we identify current approaches and evaluate their merits. Certain methodological problems are faced by researchers working with hidden populations, and this paper explores these using a sample of Ukrainian illegal self-employed construction workers operating in London. Semi-structured interviews with 20 Ukrainians showcase the issues raised and help illustrate the limited applicability of some commonly used research methods to ethnic minority entrepreneurship studies. We used intermediary to help gain access to these illegal migrants in order to satisfy the sensitive issues of this vulnerable group of respondents. We analyse the ethical considerations, problems and issues with access to such data, discuss early and more recent sampling methodologies and the ways to estimate the size of hidden population. This paper, hence, establishes the state of the art approaches in this field and proposes potential improvements in achieving representativeness of the data. Using the Ukrainian illegal self-employed construction workers as an example, this paper evaluates the choices made by the researchers. The main contribution of this paper is to showcase the methodological issues emerging when studying hard-to-reach groups and to emphasise the limited applicability of some methods to research on hidden populations

Church and State: An Economic Analysis

What purpose is served by a government\u27s protection of religious liberty? Many have been suggested, the most prominent of which center on the protection of freedom of belief and expression. However, since every regulation potentially interferes with religious freedom, it is useful to consider more concrete purposes that could suggest limits on the degree to which religious liberty should be protected. This paper focuses on the concrete economic consequences of state regulation of religion. We examine the effects of state regulation on corruption, economic growth, and inequality. The results suggest that laws and practices burdening religion enhance corruption. Laws burdening religion reduce economic growth and are positively associated with inequality

Utility payments in Ukraine: Affordability, subsidies and arrears.

Transition has led to a significant increase in the severity and incidence of poverty in Eastern Europe. One important aspect of poverty is access to, and the affordability of, basic services like electricity, heat and water. This paper provides evidence on this issue from the Ukraine Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (ULMS). The paper identifies considerable differences in both access and affordability between different localities in Ukraine. Social protection measures can help to alleviate affordability constraints, but the analysis finds that social support is not well targeted. The currently low tariffs prevent an escalation of affordability problems but constraints nevertheless exist. Many households have accumulated substantial arrears as a consequence, although non-payment is a complex issue and not solely a function of affordability

SME financing and credibility: does entrepreneur’s gender matter?

Objectives: The aim of this paper is to explore the notion of entrepreneur credibility, a sense of belief or trust in the individual’s ability to fulfill the entrepreneurial role and create and sustain a viable venture, as perceived by key stakeholder in particular from gender perspective. Prior Work: Current literature emphasizes the masculine discourse which informs the idea of the contemporary entrepreneur (Ahl, 2006). Women lack business credibility in the eyes of employees, customers, suppliers and financial institutions (Baines et al., 2003; Belle and La Valle, 2003; Marlow et al., 2008;). It has been suggested that it is both more difficult for women to raise start-up and growth finance (Coleman, 2000; SBA report, 2013) and that women encounter credibility problems (Marlow et al., 2008; Freel et al., 2012) when dealing with banks in particular. Assessing the influence of gender upon entrepreneurial credibility and investigating the implications of such remains difficult. Approach: We address this gap through a quantitative analysis of the relationship between gender and perceived credibility in terms of SME financing, exploring these effects by industry, establishment employment size, and over time. Using a panel firm-level dataset from the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance survey (BEEPS) on 26 countries in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia for 2002-2009, we study whether entrepreneur’s credibility with various stakeholders such as banks and informal finance providers differs by gender, estimating fixed/random effects panel data models and also performing propensity score matching on gender variables. Results: Preliminary findings suggest that there is evidence of lower credibility as measured by having an overdraft, checking/savings account, and access to alternative informal sources of financing, of female-owned enterprises for older firms. Results for start-up firms are mixed, which calls for further investigation. Implications: This initial comparative research provides valuable insights for policy. Although there are early indications of lack of credibility shown by female business owners, we question whether the reasons for these findings might lie in the risk-averse type behaviors reported generally in the academic literature, and hence unwillingness of the female business owners to use overdraft facility, and use informal lending as part of fuelling the growth of their business. Value: By offering an attempt to measure female credibility in relation to SME financing we offer an innovative way to study and new interpretations of the access to finance literature