Is it possible that the term "entrepreneurship" is used too frequently and with too loose an interpretation?House Resolution 1297, sponsored by Rep. Betsy Markey, supports "the goals and ideals of American Craft Beer Week."
"We've got quite a number of microbreweries and entrepreneurs that are creating jobs, and we wanted to celebrate that this is a craft," Markey told POLITICO.
"I think beer has been a tradition since this country was founded," said Markey.
Prior studies have defined high-growth firms (HGFs) in terms of sales or employment, and analyzed their contribution to employment growth. We define HGFs by employment and sales and add definitions of value added and productivity. We examine the contribution of HGFs to employment growth, economic growth, productivity growth, and sales growth. All HGFs give a disproportionately large positive contribution to economic growth and most also give large positive contributions to growth in employment, productivity and sales. Although HGFs of different definitions are usually not the same firms, young firms are more likely to be HGFs irrespective of definition.The paper is by Sven-Olov Daunfeldt,Niklas Elerta, and Dan Johansson, and is focused on Sweden. The results seem comparable across countries however.
Her website is here and her papers are here.Duflo has been a leader in using randomized field experiments to address important questions concerning public policy in developing countries. In one series of papers, she and various coauthors study the impact of female political leadership on local government spending and attitudes toward women by examining a policy that required one-third of India’s villages, selected at random in each election cycle, to choose a woman as council head. She finds, for example, that villages forced to choose female council heads shift local government spending away from education and towards drinking water and (in some areas) roads. Another series of papers measures the effects of various randomized educational interventions, such as the introduction of teacher aids (local women with some secondary education but no formal teacher training), a computer-assisted math program, reductions in pupil-teacher ratios, ability grouping, various forms of monitoring and incentives to reduce teacher absenteeism, and programs designed to encourage community participation. For example, in work with Abhijit Banerjee, Rukmini Banerji, Rachel Glennerster, and Stuti Khemani, she investigates the effects of three randomly assigned programs targeting community participation. The first informed villagers about opportunities to participate in school governance and monitoring committees, the second trained villagers to use a testing tool, and the third organized literate villagers to hold remedial reading classes for illiterate children. The study concludes that the interventions had no impact on community involvement in the schools, no impact on teacher effort, and no impact on students' achievement in school.
In work with Emmanuel Saez, Duflo has also used field experiments to study issues concerning U.S. pension policy. One article reports the results of a study in which a random sample of employees in some departments of a major university were provided with monetary incentives to attend a benefits fair. The incentives increased attendance of both the targeted employees and employees in the same departments who were not targeted, and significantly raised enrollment in tax deferred accounts for both groups. Thus, the effects of the intervention appear to have been ransmitted through social channels.
The rest of the post is focused around brain circulation, which deserves more attention than simply talking about brain gain or brain drain. Stay tuned for the rest. Dane, Tim and the other bloggers do a great job with Growthology and it remains one of my favorite blogs.Policymaking around entrepreneurship is evidently not clear-cut as there is still quite a bit we do not understand regarding startups. In the coming weeks we will try to explore these questions and illuminate the world of startups for policymakers. We’ll start with the lowest-hanging fruit of all, though one that may seem like poison to some in Washington: immigration.
“The people who make all these decisions don’t live like the way I do,” Mr. Mann added, echoing other uninsured people in his income group. “They don’t live like the rest of us.”
From the NYT. This was in reference to the new health care bill, but it immediately reminded me of the Millenium Villages and a professor in New York. From Owen's blog:
O&G: What is it like being a Millennium Village?
Shopkeeper: Very good. We have lots of things.
O&G: Does everything work well?
Shopkeeper: No, not all of it. But we are much better off now.
O&G: Who decides what to change? Do you have a village council, or is there an Elder who decides?
Shopkeeper: It is all decided by a Professor in New York.
O&G: Really? Do you know his name?
Shopkeeper: No. But he is a very famous man
And obviously we can extend this line of reasoning into many different policy areas. It's good there are people out there making the case for entrepreneurs.
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