This paper focuses on a new concern in the small firm’s literature, namely what makes a small firm stay in business for a long time. It reflects a change in economic policy, away from an emphasis on volume of start-ups to an emphasis on quality of start-ups. The basic hypothesis is that...

The present work examines the evolutionary theories set forth by Armen Alchian in his 1950 paper, Uncertainty, Evolution and Economic Theory; and furthered by Geoffrey Manne and Todd Zywicki in their recent paper titled Uncertainty, Evolution, and Behavioral Economic Theory. Alchian’s thesis...

This paper uses a series of experiments with commercial bank loan officers to test the effect of performance incentives on risk-assessment and lending decisions. We first show that, while high-powered incentives lead to greater screening effort and more profitable lending, their power is muted...

We conduct an experiment with commercial bank loan officers to test how performance compensation affects risk-assessment and lending. High-powered incentives lead to greater screening effort and more profitable lending decisions. This effect is, however, muted by deferred compensation and...

Cooperatives represent an alternative to large-scale corporate farms and plantations as well as to independent unaffiliated small private farms. This paper presents a comparative modeling narrative on cooperative organizational forms' potential impact on equitable rural development. This speaks...

This paper empirically investigates the biogeographic determinants of the human DRD4 exon III locus, a particular gene variant associated with the human personality trait of novelty-seeking behavior. Providing a novel compilation of worldwide DRD4 exon III allele frequencies in a large sample of...

This paper suggests a theoretical framework and provides empirical evidence for a hump-shaped relationship between the fraction of novelty-seeking traits in society and current levels of per capita income. The hypothesis is that novelty-seeking traits produce two countervailing effects on...