This paper carries out an empirical assessment of the relationship between social capital and labour productivity in small and medium enterprises in Italy. By means of structural equations models, the analysis investigates the effect of different aspects of the multifaceted concept of social...

In this paper, we focus on two barriers to entry that may hinder the formation of new firms: capital requirements and regulatory business cost. The contribution of this paper is twofold: we compare the availability of different types of financing sources to address the issue of capital...

There are many examples of markets involving two groups of agents who need to interact via 'platforms', and where one group's benefit from joining a platform depends on the number of agents from the other group who join the same platform. This paper presents theoretical models for three variants...

Most of the construction work in a nation is typically performed by companies that are based in that nation. For a U.S. contractor to win an award in another country, it generally must offer highly specialized technological or managerial capabilities. In most cases, only highly skilled U.S....

Consumer discrimination, to the extent that it discourages the entry of Black-owned firms may be welfare reducing, as market output is lower than otherwise. This paper offers a simple model of duopoly in which conditions are derived for which a profit subsidy to Black-owned firms increases,...

This paper provides a theoretical framework for analyzing one of the most important intangible assets in a firm: the ability to predict profitable investment opportunities. This paper shows theoretically how to measure the accuracy of information used to predict opportunities, and estimates the...

Prior research suggests that brand may influence consumer preference for differentiated products. However, the extant literature does not measure how brand value affects product similarity and consumer choice. This paper examines demand response to the proliferation of personal computers (PCs)....

El objetivo de este trabajo es ofrecer una revisión de las principales regularidades que, desde una óptica microeconómica, se han observado en los trabajos que analizan la evolución de la productividad y los determinantes de su crecimiento en la economía española durante las últimas...

The paper examines the three following issues connected to the energy market: 1.Uncertainty ex ante over demand, and the consequent choice of risking to either overproduce, or to underserve the market. 2.Capacity constraints for the energy firms, with the consequence that production is shared by...

The paper underlines the division of labour principle for understanding the development of the entrepreneurial process within a social network; the principal background premise is that the two crucial factors affecting the entrepreneur when he is creating a new business are his previous...