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Essays On Migration, Entrepreneurship, And Risk Hedging, Yiming Liu

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Expectations of higher income and better living conditions are the major causes behind migration. Whether migration is temporary or permanent is a consequence of both these expectations as well as the policies and the economic development of the host area. Migration comes with risks and migrants are more willing to take risks than nonmigrants. Entrepreneurship, like migration, also requires risk-taking for potentially high returns. The theme that connects the three chapters in the dissertation is the risks people take as they decide to migrate, to start new businesses, and the hedging strategies they adopt to mitigate these risks. This paper …

Entrepreneurial Intersections: An Ethnographic Study Of Entrepreneurial Strategies Amidst Crisis And Community In Havana, Cuba, John Vertovec

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation has two primary goals. First, to examine how structural conditions (e.g., state policies/regulations, resource scarcity, etc.) and intersecting inequities and inequalities shape opportunities and challenges for entrepreneurship. Second, to analyze how local experiences with, and interpretations of underlying social and economic narratives influence the ways that people conceptualize and draw upon local/global resources in order to act entrepreneurially in individual ways and with their communities in mind.

While scholars discuss how structural conditions impact entrepreneurship, and how entrepreneurship can improve communities (social entrepreneurship), the consequences of intersecting inequalities on both areas remain understudied. Using ethnographic data gathered in …

The Effect Of Institutional Dimensions And Cultural Dimensions On The Level Of Entrepreneurial Activity Across Countries, Jung Hoon Kim

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Entrepreneurship research is becoming more critical to policymakers and scholars around the world. However, few scholars have explored the effect of national culture or institutions on the entrepreneurial activity using cross-national data. Furthermore, most previous scholars have been limited to formal institutions as a theoretical structure to explore the entrepreneurial activity across countries. It is crucial to include formal, informal institutions and culture to better understand about how much or why entrepreneurial activity differs across countries.

To fill this gap, this study investigates how national culture and institutions impact the level of entrepreneurial activity across 30 countries using cross-national dataset …

Three Essays On A Longitudinal Analysis Of Business Start-Ups Using The Kauffman Firm Survey, Indu Khurana

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focused on the longitudinal analysis of business start-ups using three waves of data from the Kauffman Firm Survey.

The first essay used the data from years 2004-2008, and examined the simultaneous relationship between a firm’s capital structure, human resource policies, and its impact on the level of innovation. The firm leverage was calculated as, debt divided by total financial resources. Index of employee well-being was determined by a set of nine dichotomous questions asked in the survey. A negative binomial fixed effects model was used to analyze the effect of employee well-being and leverage on the count data …

Three Empirical Essays On Startups’ Survival Using The Kauffman Firm Survey, Mohamad Nassereddine

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation studies newly founded U.S. firms’ survival using three different releases of the Kauffman Firm Survey. I study firms’ survival from a different perspective in each chapter.

The first essay studies firms’ survival through an analysis of their initial state at startup and the current state of the firms as they gain maturity. The probability of survival is determined using three probit models, using both firm-specific variables and an industry scale variable to control for the environment of operation. The firm’s specific variables include size, experience and leverage as a debt-to-value ratio. The results indicate that size and relevant …

Three Essays On Entrepreneurial Motivation, Entry, Exit And Monetary Rewards, Dmitriy Krichevskiy

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes rewards and motivations of self-employment. In light of recent research contributions of Barton Hamilton (2000), which find entrepreneurship not as financially rewarding as wage work, my dissertation attempts to both verify and explain this claim. The first essay proposes a theoretical model of evolution of erroneous earnings expectations on part of a nascent entrepreneur. Inability to observe, survey, and take into account all of the returns to entrepreneurship prior to business entry creates a biased set of beliefs on part of the potential entrants. Using Bayesian learning, a nascent entrepreneur starting out with correct perception of profit …

Three Essays On Self-Employment Transitions, Organizational Capital, And Firm Formation, Fatma Deli

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores how economic, organizational, and personal factors affect self-employment transitions, occupational decisions, and firm formation activities of individuals at different positions in the skill distribution. The first essay of my dissertation studies how local unemployment rates differentially affect entry into self-employment by individuals at different places in the skill distribution. The empirical results show a positive correlation between local unemployment rates and entry into self-employment for low-ability workers, but not for high-ability workers. Including employer size to eliminate possible distortions showed that the positive association between unemployment and self-employment among low-ability workers is in fact driven by the …

Women And Development In Senegal: Microcredit And Household Well Being, Safietou Kane

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The challenging living conditions of many Senegalese families, and the absence of a providing spouse, have led women to covet new economic opportunities, such as microcredit loans. These loans offer Senegalese women the possibility to financially support their households and become active participants in their economies by starting or sustaining their micro businesses. The study takes place in Grand-Yoff, an overpopulated peri-urban area of the Senegalese capital city Dakar, where most people face daily survival issues. This research examines the impact of microcredit activities in the household of Senegalese female loan recipients in Grand-Yoff by examining socio-economic indicators, in particular …

Global Factors Affecting Women's Participation In Leadership, Amanda M. Bullough

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is a multi-level, cross-cultural study of women in leadership conducted with both macro-society data and individual-level data aggregated to the country level. The research questions are, “What macro and micro forces are hindering or advancing women into business or political leadership?” “How do these forces impact the level of women’s involvement in business and political leadership in a particular country?” Data was collected from 10 secondary sources, available for 213 countries, and includes about 300 variables for business leadership (N=115) and political leadership (N=181). To date, most women in leadership research has been Western- or US- based, and …

The Role Of Market Knowledge In Recognizing And Exploiting Entrepreneurial Opportunities In Technology Intensive Firms, Anna-Maija Renko

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Entrepreneurial opportunity recognition is an increasingly prevalent phenomenon. Of particular interest is the ability of promising technology based ventures to recognize and exploit opportunities. Recent research drawing on the Austrian economic theory emphasizes the importance of knowledge, particularly market knowledge, behind opportunity recognition. While insightful, this research has tended to overlook those interrelationships that exist between different types of knowledge (technology and market knowledge) as well as between a firm’s knowledge base and its entrepreneurial orientation. Additional shortfalls of prior research include the ambiguous definitions provided for entrepreneurial opportunities, oversight of opportunity exploitation with an extensive focus on opportunity recognition …