Does intra-country variation in individualism explain variations in intra-country entrepreneurial activity? Rugged individualism, a combination of individualism and anti-statism, is proxied by the total years of frontier experience in a US county between 1790 and 1890. We exploit this historic variation in tandem with present-day GDP growth in a county to test how the historic frontier experience interacts with changes in economic growth to explain the entrepreneurial activity. With small effect sizes, the findings demonstrate the greater (limited) value of rugged individualism in low (high) GDP growth conditions in driving entrepreneurial activity. Robust to a variety of specifications and a placebo test, the mechanism seems to operate through lower collective efficacy in counties with higher total frontier experience. The findings carry implications for within-country cultural variations and entrepreneurial activity.
This paper evaluates the efficiency of personal cars by using the non-parametric data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach. Analysis and comparison is performed in a normative manner since all the economic and technical parameters used (four and ten respectively) are not explicitly weighted. The data set covers 121 different car models in 1997, as appeared in the German Auto Motor und Sport magazine.
Building on the literature on individualistic culture and entrepreneurship, we use variation in a US county's frontier experience (rugged individualism) as a proxy for local individualism to explain variation in SBA loan default rates. For every 10-year increase in frontier experience in a county (ranging from 0 to 63 years between 1790 and 1890), the hazard of default was 0.964 times lower, a small but economically meaningful effect. The effects are more salient for sole proprietors and robust to economic shocks from neighbouring shale boom counties and placebo tests. The results indicate that expanding the eligibility requirements for SBA loans to include individuals from US counties with individualistic cultures may be beneficial.
Auditing in ventures may provide the necessary financial reporting bulwark, however, auditing also has direct and indirect costs that may be less efficacious in a venture with limited routines and capabilities, and could take an entrepreneur's attention away from venture goals. We draw on a quasi-natural experiment in Sweden, where from 2011 small private firms meeting threshold criteria were exempt from audit. The law resulted in three groups of ventures - (i) those who were above the threshold criteria and continued with an audit, and among those who were exempt some chose to (ii) voluntarily audit or (iii) opted-out of the audit. Starting with ventures established in 2007 (about three years before the passage of the law), and drawing records of the Swedish Companies Registration Office, our results show that while opting out of audit slightly improves the odds of survival, it has detrimental effects when sales volatility or return on assets are high. Those voluntary auditing can realize a higher debt ratio, but also face a decline in sales and net profit. The findings have implications for entrepreneurs in particular and policymakers considering initiation or repealing of audit requirements for ventures.