Tinbergen Institute

About: Tinbergen Institute is a education organization based out in Rotterdam, Netherlands. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Volatility (finance) & Competition (economics). The organization has 565 authors who have published 3157 publications receiving 82800 citations.

The impact of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurship competencies and intentions: An evaluation of the Junior Achievement Student Mini-Company Program

Abstract: This paper analyzes the impact of a leading entrepreneurship education program on college students’ entrepreneurship competencies and intentions using an instrumental variables approach in a difference-in-differences framework. We exploit that the program was offered to students at one location of a school but not at another location of the same school. Location choice (and thereby treatment) is instrumented by the relative distance of locations to parents’ place of residence. The results show that the program does not have the intended effects: the effect on students’ self-assessed entrepreneurial skills is insignificant and the effect on the intention to become an entrepreneur is even significantly negative.

Uncertainty Avoidance and the Rate of Business Ownership across 22 OECD Countries, 1976-2000

Abstract: This paper deals with the influence of cultural attitudes towards uncertainty on the level of businessownership across countries. First, the concepts of uncertainty and risk are elaborated, as well as theirrelevance for entrepreneurship. Second, cross-sectional regression analysis using data for three separateyears in twenty Western countries and Japan and controlling for GDP per capita, yields evidence thatuncertainty avoidance is positively correlated with the prevalence of business ownership. This surprisingfinding suggests that a personal trait (risk aversion) and its related cultural characteristic (uncertaintyavoidance) may have a diverging impact on entrepreneurship. Possibly, a climate of uncertainty avoidancein large organizations pushes enterprising individuals towards self-employment. Third, we carry out pooledpanel regressions with respect to business ownership rates in two distinct cultural country clusters for theyears 1976, 1988 and 2000. In the group of high-uncertainty avoidance countries a strongly negativerelationship between GDP per capita and the level of business ownership is found, suggesting that risingopportunity costs of entrepreneurship are the dominant perception in this cultural environment. In a groupof low-uncertainty avoidance countries no such influence of per capita income is found, but the profitsassociated with being self-employed are positively associated with business ownership.

Employee layoff under different modes of restructuring: exit, downsizing or relocation

Abstract: Pressured by globalizing economies and growing international competition, an increasing number of firms are forced to rationalize productive operations. Especially poorly performing firms need to improve their profitability through downsizing or relocating their operations, which in many cases causes collective employee layoffs. This article adds to the emergent literature on the consequences of downsizing by looking into the determinants of collective employee layoffs. Based on a unique sample of Belgian firms reporting collective layoffs this article analyzes the firm's decision to dismiss all employees (exit), a significant proportion of its employees without creating new employment elsewhere (downsizing), or to move production abroad (international relocation). We theoretically derive the conditions under which a firm prefers one strategy to another. The empirical results confirm that relocating firms are most profitable among the restructuring firms, have invested more in the recent past, operate in sectors with significant economies of scale and belong more often to a multinational group than firms opting for downsizing or exit. Downsizing firms are more capital intensive than relocating firms, while exiting firms are less profitable, smaller, younger, and more labor intensive than downsizing or relocating firms.

'Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, Who in this Land is Fairest of All?' Distributional Sensitivity in the Measurement of Socioeconomic Inequality of Health

Abstract: This paper explores four alternative indices for measuring health inequalities in a way that takes into account attitudes towards inequality. First, we revisit the extended concentration index which has been proposed to make it possible to introduce changes into the distributional value judgements implicit in the standard concentration index. Next, we suggest an alternative index based on a different weighting scheme. In contrast to the extended concentration index, this new index has the ‘symmetry’ property. We also show how these indices can be generalized so that they satisfy the ‘mirror’ property, which may be seen as a desirable property when dealing with bounded variables. We empirically compare the different indices for under-five mortality rates and the number of antenatal visits in developing countries.